Chapter 58

While he could fly easily, he went too fast for anyone but a galloping Kiyoko. His method of flight reminded him of those experimental personal hover suits. Great for the person in them, but hell on everyone nearby, with it kicking up a wind strong enough to knock someone over. The spear could limit the fallout, but Adrian did not like asking it to do so. It was something his spear found actively annoying, and the bond was sufficiently intimate that Adrian disliked requesting things he knew would upset it.

“I’ll see you at the hotel.” He lifted off and sped away, heading straight to the hotel. It was daylight and people saw him skimming over the ground and then hopping over the fence. There was some alarm, but his thief power amplified his voice.

“Sorry. Friendly, experimental flight, no control, sorry.”

He came in for a landing next to the pub he had slept at yesterday. Partially walking on his sore ankle but mostly supporting himself with his spear, he pushed himself inside.

A young girl was there. She must have only just turned fifteen.

Level 2 waitress

“Hi.” Adrian saw her eyes go unfocused and then grow wide. Suddenly, she was rushing forward to support him.

“Sir, let me help you.”

“I’m fine.”

She ignored him, grabbing him under his arm and taking some of his weight. It was more comfortable than the spear by some margin.

He nodded towards the large table and she helped over to sit.

“Can I get you anything?”

Adrian thought about the echidna. He wanted something that would get him drunk but fade quickly. “Hard liquor.”

“Umm.” she looked confused.

“Whisky. Then maybe prepare some finger foods because my friends will be here soon.”

She nodded and disappeared.

Using his Mind, he opened his bag of holding and floated out the drink he was planning on experimenting with. He needed the release of a few hours of being drunk.

Throat Spike Hallunican

A potent poison mixed to give the effect of alcohol.

Length of effect four hours.

With his increasing poison immunity, it would only last half an hour, which is what he wanted.

The young girl came back. She had not even bothered to pour, and just grabbed the first whisky bottle she had seen. It was house whisky. Shitty stuff. It would taste better than the throat spike though.

He poured himself a generous shot with no ice and gulped it down in one gulp. It burned pleasantly, and the taste was okay. Not great, but not terrible. Adrian did not care. Step one done. He poured another shot and then had the throat spike. It was like sipping oil. He swallowed the slimy substance and then chased it with the whisky.

“What is that?”

Adrian looked at the waitress, amused. She was young and had not learnt to give patrons space yet.

“Have a seat.”

“Nah, Ma says I’m not supposed to pester the customers.”

“She’s not here.”

“She will be here in a minute.”

“Why?” Adrian asked, suspecting he knew what the answer would be.

“I had strict instructions to call her back if you arrived.”

“Fair enough.”

Adrian could feel the buzz. He wasn’t plastered, but it was pleasant enough. More throat spike might get him drunker, but it wasn’t like he was willing to have more of the oil today.

“But I insist. Sit.”

He could see the indecision warring in her, but eventually, she came to the only conclusion she could. The one her class demanded. Look after the customer. If Ma got angry later, well, the girl understood she would have got just angry if she had ignored the request.

She sat opposite him.

“I’m Adrian.”

She looked embarrassed. “Jillian.”

“Tell me about yourself, Jillian?”

“Why?”

“I’m interested. If it helps, you can talk about the town. What happened here?”

“Well…” she hesitated. “The event happened. The first week was pretty scary, especially the first few days, but different groups got organised pretty quickly. Mr. Phillips got the older kids at Seymour College to form groups. There’s over a hundred of them with combat classes and he got them working in teams really quick.”

“Why didn’t you choose combat?”

“It’s not really my thing. I thought about being a mage, but the waitress class is very flexible.”

“Really?”

“Yep. It is actually half a combat class if you take it in that direction. I have some pretty nasty knife throwing skills and hand-to-hand fighting.”

“You need combat for waitressing?”

She giggled. “Apparently. I haven’t thrown a knife at a customer yet. There’s always the first time.” She grinned wickedly.

“You’re level three.”

“Experience is hard to get,” she admitted. “But even without someone like you, it keeps ticking up and I’ve only had my class for three weeks. Before that, I was a child. Ma was nice enough to offer me a job before I took the class.”

“That’s great. Are there any problems in town?”

“Well sure, it sort of got split into eight or nine fiefdoms for the first month or two, but that has been improving more recently. They have a council in place and travel between different areas is opening up. I know because it is helping Ma a lot. She’s busily expanding.”

The door slammed open, doing noticeable damage to the wall.

“Oops,” Jules said. “Sorry,” she called out after just a moment. Adrian giggled at that.

“You should be used to the extra by now.”

She tramped in. “I forget sometimes.”

The others followed, minus Kiyoko.

“Where’s the oracle?”

“Doing her auguries ,” Jules said, sounding dismissive. “She said that she would have a plan by tomorrow.”

Adrian remembered the echidna and its awesome power. “There isn’t a plan that will work. We’ll need to go around.”

Charlotte shook her head. “Kiyoko thought differently. She said there was a way to get you through, but she wanted to get everything together before briefing us.”

Just its passive magic had overwhelmed him. If it attacked him, no hold barred. Adrian shuddered internally and its defences were too strong for him to strike back and hurt it. “I call bullshit. There’s absolutely no way we can fight it.”

Charlotte shrugged. “We’ll see what she comes up with at breakfast.”

Adrian hesitated. If they went around, the most likely outcome would be that they would go through the mountains. Prior to his brief run-in with the hawk, Adrian had thought that he would find it relatively simple with his pseudo flight being capable of propelling him from spot to spot. Now, he was not so sure. He wished he had the clarity that Jaracol provided to extract information straight from the badge. However, Jaracol had been adamant that he wasn’t use the badge, and any attempt to would backfire.

Instead, he had to rely on Kiyoko, another actor with their own designs and plots. In all probabilities, she would send him and potentially Jules alone through the mountains. “We’ll probably be split up in the morning,” Adrian said finally. “We should enjoy ourselves tonight.”

“Why would we be?” Charlotte asked.

Adrian went to answer, but stopped himself. Galan looked sapped of energy, Omala’s face was white, even Joanne looked disappointed with herself and they were all above level forty.

Despite that, they all knew.

“Tyranny of levels. Fifty-three is more than twice as strong as forty-three. Guys, if our journey ends tomorrow don’t be down on yourselves. We’ve saved tens of thousands of people on this journey, and I couldn’t have done it without you.”

“You’re just saying that,” Galan said finally. “We’ve been spare wheels.”

‎ “I didn’t fight the swoopers, and with the shintopurs…” He stopped talking. There was no reason to go any further there. If the snake had bitten him while the shintopurs were not worrying about the others, they would have found his comatose body. Magic pill or not, he was sure Jaracol wasn’t have saved him from that.

“And the zxeatra,” Jules interrupted. “Maybe we would have won that fight without you guys, but it was close as it was and you were the strongest there.”

“I wanted to go to Melbourne,” Galan said finally.

Joanne gave him a one-handed hug. “We all did, but we all know The Billionaire is probably right. We’re not going further.”

“Hey,” he protested good-naturedly. Joanne laughed, and the tension bled out of the room. “Jillian,” he called out, fishing out two thousand energy. “Can you organise us some drinks?”

Her eyes went wide with the amount of money he had just given her. “I’ll serve what we have and then buy some more.” She disappeared and returned a few seconds later with an assortment of trader and earth liquor. “Help yourselves. Any preferences?” She waved the chits.

Jules stood up and dug into her bag of holding and produced a chip, and from its rich gold colour that was edging towards glowing, had to have had over five thousand energy. “Elasca liquor.”

Adrian remembered what that cursed stuff did and the aftereffects the next day. “I’m not drinking that.”

“And the antidote. For—” She looked around. Mike and Charlotte both nodded. Beatrice shook her head vigorously.

“Sure,” Omala agreed.

“Me too,” Joanne said finally. “Though toilet trips are going to be fun.”

Adrian laughed.

All eyes turned to the final two.

“Sure I’m in,” Felicity agreed.

Everyone then looked at Galan. “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“We’ll have eight doses.” Jules transferred the extra energy to the chip and handed it over.

“I said no,” Galan protested, having counted up the numbers.

“Technically, you said you don’t think it’s a good idea,” Jules pointed out.

“I meant, no.”

“Should have said that.”

“I’m not drinking it.”

She put a hand firmly on his shoulder and squeezed. He winced. “You know we love you, but,” she leant forward, “you’re drinking it, Adrian, too,” she whispered loud enough for everyone to hear. “And if you struggle, you won’t get the antidote afterwards—”

“Jules,” Adrian interrupted. “We’re not doing that. If he doesn’t want to join us, he doesn’t have to.”

“But the antidote is a thousand energy.”

“Did you really just whine?”

She laughed. “No… why would you think?”

“Definitely a whine,” Omala confirmed.

Adrian laughed harder

“Adrian, are you drunk?” Jules was studying him intently.

“Umm.”

“Stand up, one leg in the air, and touch your nose. Walk in a straight line.”

He did as instructed, doing it perfectly. “See not drunk.”

“He is,” Omala declared.

“Maybe…” he admitted. “The whole echidna, foot thing… it.”

“How?” Jules said in shock. “You had like two minutes.”

“This.” He pulled out the flask and tried not to smile. “Skoal it and you will see.”

“Aftereffects?”

“Nothing.”

She unstoppered the flask and poured it down her throat, gulping. Her face scrunched up. She dropped the poison and then fell to knees gagging on the taste.

“But it doesn’t taste very nice.” he finished, laughing.

“That’s terrible,” she gasped. Omala handed her a jug of water, which she swallowed half the sips and spat out the rest. “Disgusting.” She looked up at him, where he was still giggling.

“You knew. I’m going to kill you.” She stood, tried to launch herself at him and tripped over her own feet. Adrian caught her. “That stuff is potent,” she slurred.

“Yep, but you’re supposed to drink it with chasers on either side to get rid of the taste.”

“I can’t believe you did that to me.” She lightly punched him on the shoulder. It did not even hurt. She was probably being extra cautious because of her inebriated state.

Ma turned up. Food was delivered, and then Jillian came back. Ma intercepted her and pulled out the drinks that had been ordered. Her hands moved faster than should be possible, but Adrian knew it was the interaction between his title and her class. He wondered if there was a way to abuse that more extensively.

After the drinks were passed over, Jillian went running off and Ma came over. He hoped the girl had not gotten into trouble.

She held out the bottle of Elasca Liquor pointedly. “You know what happened when Jillian mentioned she bought these.” They all went silent like a bunch of schoolchildren sprung by a teacher. “Alarm bells went off. How were you planning on getting to the toilet?” Ma laughed at their expression. “Hold off half an hour and we can get half a dozen minders for you. Otherwise,” her nose wrinkled, “It’ll get unpleasant. Enjoy your food.”

She walked away. “Do you think you’ll do better this time?” Jules asked finally.

“What?”

“Now we have internal haste.”

“I…” Adrian thought about it. One of the side effects of the poison was changing his perception of time, but now that he had experience moving his body at four times speed he would not be as affected as previously. The first time he had ended up falling and then bouncing in slow motion unable to stop himself. This time, it was possible that he could deal with that time dilation. “There’s no way they would have left in that sort of exploit.”

Jules raised an eyebrow and laughed. Mike was looking wide-eyed at him.

“No way?” Charlotte asked.

“Fuck, can you imagine,” Galan whispered.

“When you go all out you’re already terrifying,” Jules said. “Not as terrifying as me, but…”

Adrian brought up the stats of the liquor.

Stage 1. Elasca Liquor You have been poisoned. Time dilation of twenty times for next twenty-three seconds. Partial paralysis, disorientation, dizziness, hallucination, and noise sensitivity.

He read the details out to everyone.

“I know,” Jules responded, her eyes challenging. “But I have basic internal haste, so only ten times time dilation.”

“Partial paralysis, disorientation, they might be problematic?”

“You don’t know if you don’t try.”

“Are you going to?” Adrian asked.

“Of course I am. I want advanced internal haste.”

“Twenty seconds won’t be long enough.”

“Adrian, look at the stage two effects.”

Stage 2. Elasca Liquor - Walk the tightrope - duration 3 hours.

One of the following three buffs is in play:

 Unsteady Legs - fifty percent less agility.

 Everyone is my best friend - Ninety-five percent more likely to tell the truth. A one hundred percent guarantee to overshare.

 I laugh at dad jokes - Find everything funny (Yes even the dad jokes you have told in the past.)

Warning. Stage 2 will revert to stage 1 if blood alcohol drops below 0.16%

“You’re crazy.”

“Am I?” Jules looked smugly at him. “We can do three hours of practice.”

“Ma,” he called out. The older woman was at his side in what felt like mere moments. “Can you organise a dozen healers as well?”

Jules clapped in excitement. “We’re doing it!”

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