Chapter 47 – Free Maid Services

Bjorn let out a chaotic laugh at the golem’s suggestion. “Yes, let’s make our way through T. rex territory, straight into the lake where the Razanandrongobe Sakalavae live, and pray for the best.” He smacked his belly and hooted.

“Thor help me,” he said. “Of all the damn places the exit could’ve been, it’s in the only spot we have no chance in hell of getting to.”

“Other… portals,” said the behemoth golem. “Here, and here.”

The golem pointed towards two other areas. This time, Bjorn furrowed his brow and toyed with his beard.

“What do you think?” I asked him.

“Hm.... these spots are tricky to access, but not impossible. I personally haven’t ventured to either of these locations myself, but I’ve mapped out their surrounding area.”

“Forget it, we’ll continue this talk tomorrow. For now, let’s eat!”

Bjorn brought over some mushrooms and bread, which he made himself by picking wild wheat and then heating it in a stone oven that he fashioned, which used a coal-like rock as fuel.

And, even more surprisingly, the dwarf rolled out a wooden barrel full of beer that he fermented himself. “Believe it or not, back on the mountain I was considered a master brewer. I guarantee that this is some of the best beer you’ve ever tasted.”

We laughed and joked, forgetting all our worries from outside the waterfall as we downed glass after glass of Bjorn’s exquisite wild wheat beer. Bjorn shared stories of his adventures so far, and overall was in a fantastic mood now that he had real people to talk to after so long alone. Using Rosalia’s portal, I showed appreciation for what Bjorn did for us by introducing him to a goddess level luxury bath. Stepping in, it only took ten minutes for my dislocated shoulder to be completely healed.

Oddly enough, Bjorn was even more excited for the self washing laundry basket than anything else in the room. He repeatedly put the lid on and off and tried to find the ‘mechanism’ that made the thing work. When I told him that it was magic, possibly a gift from a goddess herself, Bjorn looked a bit disappointed.

When I asked if Rosalia was okay with Bjorn seeing her naked as she recharged her holy power in the hot spring, she said that she could tell he wasn’t remotely interested in her, so she was fine with it.

“So how come you’re okay with me seeing you?” I followed up.

“I made an exception for you~” she chimed.

I asked Bjorn about it later, to which he replied that human women weren’t his type.

“I like my women strong and stout,” he said. “With powerful calves and biceps.”

I wasn’t going to ask any further about this subject. It seemed like dwarves had a different standard of beauty than humans.

After having a great dinner and turning in for the night, I logged out.

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After work today, I headed to the shopping mall to pick up a package I ordered online. It was crazy how amazing technology was these days. Even things like clothing or electronics could be ordered for pickup via app like food pickup. The thing I ordered was in a nice shopping bag, wrapped in a small box. After showing my ID to the scanning machine, I was able to take my package. Quick and simple, without touching anything or getting my hands dirty.

Right after getting back to my apartment, I sank into my couch and flipped through the channels haphazardly. I put in a market order to convert some of my in-game gold into currency, so I could pay off the business debt my dad owed. He borrowed from loan sharks to fund his machinery shop a few years ago, and because that piece of property was particularly hard to sell, I needed to raise funds elsewhere to pay off the debt.

I had 30 gold and 471 silver left over, after converting 50 gold into an eye popping 18,500 dollars. Converting gold as early as possible was always a good call, because as gold became more readily available, the price would invariably go down. Although, large amounts of gold would never become super common, because from what I saw about Eclipse Online’s economy on the forums, players were already setting up a robust economic system. It was easy for the developers to control gold inflation too, because although monsters dropped gold and quests had gold payouts, a ton of that gold went to NPC shopkeepers, to pay various city fees, to craft goods, and to other gold sinks. I predicted that the value of gold would be relatively stable at least within the first year of the game.

Knock knock.

Bzzt. My phone vibrated, and I flipped it over to read a short text from a certain somebody who saved their name in my phone with six pink hearts after it.

im here

I walked over to the door and opened it. Euphemia was standing right outside, with a somewhat sour look on her face.

“Come in.”

“That’s it, come in? Aren’t you glad I came? You should be saying Oh, thank you Euphemia, I wasn’t expecting you, I really missed y–Ow!”

I pinched her cheek and dragged her inside. “Shut up.” Grabbing her wrist, I sat her on the sofa in front of the tv, and I plopped down next to her. “So how’d it go? Did you find Evelyn?

Euphemia nodded. “Yep. At first when I asked if I could use her secret passage, she got a little suspicious and asked me who it was that told me about it. But once I said that it was you, her personality flipped 180 degrees and she even started calling me sister. Can you believe that?”

Not gonna lie, I definitely could see Evelyn doing that. Ever since I finished that panty retrieval quest, her affinity towards me skyrocketed. Actually, even before all of that, it was already pretty high.

“So I got out of Talos pretty easily, then wandered towards the capital for a few hours before I got ganked by a goblin patrol and died. But I respawned in the capital, so it worked! Finally got out of Talos~”

“Thank you Spoon for telling me about that secret~” Euphemia said sweetly, leaning over and placing her chin on my belly as she looked up at me. Although she was smiling and acting cutesy, her eyes betrayed that small hint of uncontrollable fire that lay inside an otherwise cute and docile container.

“Yeah, that was valuable information, so we made an agreement, didn’t we?”

Instantly, her face went sour again, and she leaned back, crossing her arms and legs. “Che~” she said, looking the other way.

“That’s not all. I even went out of my way to get a present for you today,” I said. At the mention of present, once again Euphemia’s attitude completely changed.

“Oh, really? It’s because Spoon likes me a lot, right?” Euphemia spoke sweetly. “What kind of present is it?”

I stood up and took the package from the tv counter. “It’s clothes for you.”

Euphemia’s eyes sparkled as she watched me take the small gift wrapped red package out of the shopping bag and presented it to her. “You can open it,” I told her.

“Thank you Spoon~” she said, beaming with happiness as she took the package, pulling on the ribbon to open it. The gift wrapping came apart rather easily without need to tear it apart, leaving an unassuming black box. Euphemia lifted the lid to the box, revealing the contents within. As I said, it was a piece of clothing. Euphemia took the clothes out of the box and lifted it in the air.

“Eh?” she exclaimed, her expression changing immediately. She was looking at a somewhat skimpy maid outfit, complete with white ribbons for the arms and a small white garter that could be tied on her thigh. “This wasn’t part of the deal!” she exclaimed while blushing.

I looked her straight in the eyes and spoke. “One day when you leave your apartment unlocked like usual, you’ll find that all the beers in your fridge will be gone.”

Turning away as if nothing happened, I looked back at her once more and mouthed three words. Red bean popsicle. This was a grudge I was not going to let go lightly, because my mood that day was very poor and I was really looking forward to having it, when this little raccoon stole it without any remorse.

Euphemia understood the thinly veiled threat, and glanced back and forth from the maid outfit in her hand to my face. “You wouldn’t... my beers…” she mumbled to herself, clearly conflicted. “Ah….. fine, I’ll wear it. Where’s your bathroom, so I can change?”

I pointed to the door between my electric piano and cushion, and Euphemia walked over. Right before she closed the door, she peeked her head out and looked at me.

“Hm?”

“If you walk in while I’m changing, I’ll kill you~” she said in a sickly sweet voice. And then bam, she slammed the bathroom door closed.

“Hey, watch it,” I called out to her. “Don’t break the door.”

“Okay~” Euphemia replied, as she began to change. Or at least, that’s what she was supposed to be doing, but I could hear her going through my bathroom drawers and accidentally knocking over shampoo bottles for some reason.

I sighed. At least there wasn’t anything that I cared if she broke in the bathroom. After all, besides some cotton swabs and razors, I didn’t recall having anything particularly important in there.

Flipping through my tv to the Eclipse channel, I lounged and waited.

We’ve received reports that players all over the Avalon continent have come across [Hidden Challenge Tickets]. In an interview with the ranker [Beezlebub], Beezlebub said that he received a [Silver Invitation]. How is an invitation different from a simple ticket? We have sent our in-game reports to investigate this mystery. Unfortunately, our top reporter [Eunjin] is currently waiting out her death timer after dying during the catastrophic attack on the dwarves during the dwarven expedition, and will not be able to continue live coverage of in-game events for the next month. We are sorry for the inconvenience.

Interesting. So the highest form of a hidden challenge ticket known to the public was a silver invitation. That made me wonder what perks the gold invitation Rosalia and I had would give us during the hidden challenge.

I switched channels to the national news channel.

Breaking news! An Eclipse Online player–

Huh? Even the national news channel was covering Eclipse? It was a popular game and all, but there were dedicated channels for it already.

–has suffered a seizure during play, and is currently hospitalized in critical condition. It is unclear what caused the seizure, because the player in question was a healthy male in his early thirties, with no pre-existing health conditions or history of illness. Our health experts say that it is unlikely that the capsule caused the seizure, but tensions are high for the multi-billion dollar company.

Despite reassurance from numerous third party opinions from health professionals and engineers, shares in Eclipse corporation’s health care subsidiary Unihealth have tumbled over forty percent today. We reached out to the Eclipse development team for more news, but they declined to give any comment.

Bzzzzzzzz.

“Ah!” a girl’s voice yelped from within my bathroom. “What is this?”

Euphemia flung the bathroom door open, one hand covering her breasts as she had the lower half of the maid outfit on. In her right hand was my electric toothbrush, vibrating like all hell broke loose.

“Why do you have a vibrator in your bathroom, huh?” Euphemia shouted in an accusatory tone. “Is there anything you’re not telling me?”

“That’s just my toothbrush!” I shouted back.

She looked at the electric toothbrush, still not believing me. Because I took the top off yesterday and forgot to install another brush on it, it did look remarkably like an adult toy.

“Where’s the brush, then? And how do you turn it off? It’s buzzing like crazy!” she said, holding the toothbrush like it was dirty as it continued to bzzz away in her hand.

I stood up and walked to her, looking down at the small but insanely pretty girl as I took my toothbrush from her and pressed the off button. Then, I reached into the bathroom and opened the shelf, taking out a tooth brush head from a plastic eight-pack. I put the head onto the toothbrush and turned it back on for a moment, just to show her.

“See?” I said to her. “Can’t believe you’ve never seen an electric toothbrush before.”

Euphemia stuck out her lower lip and pouted. “Never mind then, let me finish changing~” She pushed me out of the bathroom and locked it.

The tv was still on, but I wasn’t really listening, more occupied by the fresh mental image of Euphemia in a maid outfit doing my household chores for me. By the end of this, I might even forgive her for her past grievances.

Breaking news! Two nurses caring for the seizure patient have just been reported to have been hospitalized. Information is hard to obtain, as security detail from the national government have arrived on the scene.

“Okay, I’m ready~” said Euphemia from behind the closed door.

I grabbed the remote and turned off the tv absentmindedly. With a click, the bathroom door unlocked, and Euphemia walked out in a full black and white french maid outfit. The form hugging tied-on apron dress that ended just a bit too short accentuated Euphemia’s baby smooth, pale legs. In fact, she looked better than the model I saw when ordering the outfit online.

“Spoon oppa, this outfit doesn’t cover the back at all,” Euphemia whined, pulling the skirt dress just a bit lower. She turned around to show me. The apron dress was loosely tied at her waist with a white bow, and the left and right flap hung to the side revealingly. I could see her black panties through the back very clearly.

“Well, you can just wear it here. Nobody else will see you,” I said with a straight face, trying to fight back the urge to laugh.

“Hmph, alright. I’ll do it for my husband~” Euphemia answered, walking over to me while trying to pull the skirt a bit lower.

“Husband?”

“What, you don’t like roleplay?” replied Euphemia coyly.

I shook my head. This crazy two faced bitch. I had a feeling she was trying to distract me from getting her to do her actual duties.

“Dishes are over here,” I said, guiding her to the sink. “Here’s the dish soap, and here’s soap for your hands. And I want you to do the laundry and cook for me afterwards. Do you know how to cook, or should I teach you?”

Euphemia lifted her head up proudly and stuck her tongue out. “I’m a great cook, you’ll see.”