Chapter 8: Married By Altaria

In Altaria Palace…

The Royal Advisor rushed into Prince Arthanis's throne room. "What do you think you're doing, giving away where Princess Talia is imprisoned?! Do you realize what's going to happen?"

"I thought that's what I was supposed to do," Arthanis replied. "It's in all the books. You tell the hero where the princess is imprisoned, the hero rescues the princess, then they get married and live happily ever after, right? And how did you expect me to have Talia rescued if I keep it a secret where she is?"

"What I mean is, Prince Arthanis, every adventurer in the land wants to marry the Princess. If you just give it out like that, they'll be a lot of adventurers rushing toward that same cave. And you know what happens when there are lots of people competing for one mate."

"First of all, I gave the information to Sidequest Central. They said that they do a competitive bidding system, where they find the person who's willing to do the quest for the least amount of money, then they bill me for the reward, plus a service fee so that they can make money, once the quest is done. I figured someone would be willing to do it for a low reward, so that was the cheapest way of getting the Princess rescued. And you still only have one person – the lowest bidder – doing the quest."

"You forgot something, though. You do realize that gold isn't the only thing the adventurers care about. They also care about other things, like experience points. And that Princess has to be worth at least 75,000 experience points to whoever rescues her. So even without the reward, there's still a lot of competition. And you know what happens when there's competition for a mate like that?"

"I don't know, what?"

"Tune your crystal ball to channel 37 and you'll see."

Back outside the cave where Princess Talia was being held…

Hundreds of adventurers sat on hastily assembled bleachers overlooking a central field where the trial was to take place. All had prepared for this competition, for this was when they would finally have the chance at getting the princess of their dreams. Magical scrying cameras surrounded the arena, watching every move of the contestants.Who would win?

The host of the competition walked out onto the middle of the field and began his introduction. "Okay everyone, heroes, monsters, villains, and 1st-level civilians across the land, you're watching our new special event, Married by Altaria! In this show, you'll have the opportunity to watch as our heroes battle it out against a fierce dragon for the right to marry Princess Talia and perhaps become the next Prince of Altaria! The heroes will battle it out in turn, and once one hero is killed or incapacitated the next one can step up. We have advanced medical facilities, so we hope nobody's going to get hurt."

All the scrying cameras turned to look at the medical tent. Inside the medical tent there was a hose connected to a large drum labeled "MAGICAL HEALING POTION FLUID ONLY. CAPACITY 500 GALLONS."

"So, anyway, I haven't finished explaining the rules. In this show, just you can influence the outcome from your own home! How, you ask? Well, we've made a special sponsorship deal with Minerva, our glorious Goddess of Combat. During the show, you can pray to Minerva to ask her to shift the battle a certain way. Whichever side gets the most votes is the one Minerva will support, so vote early and often! Now, our first contestant is…"

Tariel, Artalax, and Robari were near the back of the line. They observed the first contestant fight, and saw that he was doing a lot of damage to the dragon. "At this rate, he's going to kill the dragon and we won't even have a chance!" "Actually, no," Artalax replied. "Even the lowest level dragons have 3,000 hit points at least."

"What do you mean, hit points?"

"Hit points. They determine how hard a monster is to kill. Each time you're hit, you lose some, and if you get down to zero you're incapacitated. Didn't the Prince tell you about that? I mean, any adventurer has to know about combat stuff like this."

"No. I said, all the Prince did was he gave me the tutorial quests, then told me to read all the books. There wasn't anything about hit points or anything. Oh, and he also gave me all the magical items that don't work. Wasn't much of a training course if you ask me, it was mostly just a rip-off."

Tariel opened his prayer book and flipped through it frantically. "I'm trying to look for instructions on how to pray to Minerva," he said. "We have to influence the outcome or we're never going to win. Even if we can't influence the outcome at least we could ask her for combat tips, so in case it ever gets to us we'll still have a better chance of winning. " Eventually he found the right section in the book and began to pray.

"I beseech to you, glorious Minerva…"

A voice came down from the heavens that only Tariel could hear. "Thank you for praying to the Minerva Corporation. All our service representatives are unavailable right now. Your prayer is important to us, so please stay on the line and a representative will be with you as soon as possible."

"What did she say, Tariel?", asked Artalax.

"Nothing. I can't get through to a human being. I mean, of course I can't get through to a human being, up there they aren't human. But I can't even get through to an angel or anything. You'd think that if they're near-omnipotent at least they would have better customer service."

"But we don't need him, Tariel. Remember what I said earlier about hit points? We can—"

The dragon blasted a huge blast of fire at the first contestant, smashing him to the ground and completely burning him. The host spoke: "Well, it looks like the first contestant is down and out. Can he move?"

The contestant tried to move, but couldn't. "Help me! The fire – I can't move!"

"He can't move. Initiate emergency medical procedures."

The medics in the medical tent sprung into action. They aimed the hose at the injured hero and activated it, blasting the hero with a huge blast of pure healing fluid. However, the contestant was so covered in plate mail armor that none of the healing fluid actually contacted him. The dragon fired another blast and he died.

"Now that wasn't as we expected. Of course, if this hero had read any of the adventuring books that we all know Prince Arthanis loves to give out, he would have realized that every piece of armor you wear decreases your performance in combat. I mean, just look, all the faceless bad guys wear lots of armor, but they get killed easily. If this person was wearing less armor, he might have been able to get healed. Now, on to the next contestant…"

Artalax explained his plan. "Okay, what we have to do is change our position in line. But don't go up to the front right now. Wait until he's down to low hit points, then go in and finish him off. That's the key to winning." And so they waited until a few people went, so that the dragon was down to only 20 out of 3,000 hit points. Then Tariel rushed into combat and finished the dragon off, winning the competition.

"Wow, that last contestant killed the dragon really fast. Clearly Minerva must be on his side. So we have a winner: Tariel will soon be Princess Talia's new husband, and he might even succeed Prince Arthanis as the ruler of Altaria!"

Though Tariel's won the competition,

Talia has her inhibitions.

To win her, there's another quest:

Will Tariel complete this test?