“Hey guy, you just going to stand there all day?” a rocky voice behind me asks. A little surprised someone was in the room I turn around and there’s a man about as high as my chest. He’s got the same the same outfit as Baldr on, a pair of desert combat boots, grey tactical pants, and he’s got a Kryptek patterned combat blouse on1 his face is a mishmash of tiny scars, a lumpy nose with a crook in it, and eyes so inset I cannot even see the color. He’s wearing a kryptek skullcap and sporting a friendly smile. I will away the blue screen for a minute, I’m not usually one for making friends but the only person I know here is a Valkyrie who either wants to rob me, or fuck me. possibly both so I’m not going to turn down offers.

Unhooking his hands from his pockets he moves to shake my hand “Names Hep. I was with the guard patrol that almost Merced you when you fell out of the sky. A little while ago Ianata told me we're both under her banner and we might get on well, so I figured I would get the ball rolling.” There isn’t a hint of malice in anything he is saying, but I don’t do well with trusting people, maybe he just hasn’t gotten to his angle yet.

I reach out to shake “Call me Daniel,” his hand shake is firm, and dry “it’s nice to meet you Hep, maybe you’ll let me buy you a drink and I can pick your brain about a few things I must have missed by skipping the regular introduction.”

“Sounds good to me, you want to go through and sell off any loot before we go, or do you plan to do that later?” He is pointing at a keypad that is over the wall. I’d forgotten about it “how much are beers? I guess I should have asked before I offered.” His laugh is ridiculous enough to sound fake, and incredibly loud. I can’t help but laugh, I used to serve with a guy who laughed like this. After he is done laughing he wipes a tear from his eye and slaps me on the back “This is Valhalla boss, the drinks are always free. The food is usually about 6-7 coppers for whatever is in the pot though. You can get free food too but you don’t want that, it tastes like straight garbage.”

I can’t help but give him a shit eating grin, Hep and I are going to be great friends. “let’s do this then, don’t go too crazy I only managed to pick up a couple silvers and some copper.” We start making out way towards the stairs upstairs and I ask him “is guarding something everybody has to do, or some kind of job option?” While we are walking towards the stairs I can’t help but look around, there are tons more people here now. There are groups of humans, people that look like they might be cat-people mix, reptilians, and more people built like Hep.

“Guard duty is mandatory until you reach level 5, most people just keep on with it though. It’s only a 6-hour shift once every week. The guard designation on your I.D. gets you discounts pretty much everywhere in town, it’s nothing too big but 4% off everything adds up when you think about the long term.” He’s got a point there.

Once we are at the bottom of the stairs I am no longer able to ignore the smell that is wafting down them. It smells like someone is cooking sausages and hot red Saur-kraut, and it smells like they know what the fuck they are doing. I haven’t smelled food this good in years, living in the barracks and eating at the DFAC2 is cost effective, but leaves a lot to be desired. Hep is looking at me with a sparkle in his eye, I haven’t known him too long but I can tell he is physically stopping himself from laughing again.

I wipe the drool off the side of my mouth and motion for him to lead on “I don’t know how much that kraut is going to cost me, but I will suck every dick in this hall to get some if I have to.” He snorts “you’re an odd one, were going to get on just fine. Most of these people are too serious for my taste, none of em can take a joke, and they get all butt-hurt at the drop of a hat. Bunch of whiny little bitches if you ask me.” We make it to a table and he waves a table wench over. “Most everybody at this compound is level 10 or under, so some of them have forgotten that this is the land of the chosen, we are all warriors here but they think they are better than everyone else. most people who make it above ten either move out to the bigger cities, group up, or join a guild and move to their hall.”

The serving wench walks up and I’m a bit stunned. I’ve never seen a less attractive woman in my life. She’s about 5 foot even, wearing a knee length serving dress, and some type of apron with her hair pulled back under a kerchief. She’s a got a solid build to her, a little bit of an hourglass, but only because her ass and chest are bigger by a small margin. The show stopper is her face though. An almost square jaw with cheeks that are too chubby for her figure, her nose is potato shaped, and she has a mono-brow that would make an ogre proud. “what’ll you have boys?”

She gives Hep an overly exaggerated wink and he turns a bit red. Oh god, say it aint so Hep, say it aint so.

“Hey Ellet, we’ll both have a plate of the sausage and kraut, I’ll have whatever Sven’s got on the tap for rotation for today beautiful.” I guess everybody’s got a type.

She looks at me, “you going to have anything handsome?”

“I’ll have whatever he’s having, if it’s not some type of pale ale. If that’s the case, I’ll take whatever your favorite mead on tap is.” It never hurts to flirt with your server, even if you aren’t interested.

Hep gives me an annoyed look “We can be friends, but don’t try horning in my territory.” Whoa, that’s aggressive.

“Wouldn’t dream of it boss. I’m not interested, just a force of habbit flirting with serving staff.” I deflect a little more, “little too short for my taste anyhow. I like mine with some legs to em.” I don’t know him well enough to joke about his girlfriend yet, even if I did some guys never take well to that. Ellet sits the plates and glasses on the table, “here you go boys, going to be 20 coppers for the meal, but I threw in some olives and pickles for free.” I pull the money out of my inventory and hand it to her “thank you miss.”

the smell of the food is almost too intense, the smell of the Saur-kraut mixed with the spicy pungent sausage is almost like sitting in my aunt’s kitchen back home, it makes my eyes start to water. Go away feels, I’ll deal with you when I get back to my room. Pushing the moment of weakness out of my head, I put of the I put some kraut on a fork and cut off a piece of sausage. Putting the fork into my mouth all I can do is groan and hope I die with this food in my mouth. “I’m not sure who cooked this but this is the happiest I’ve ever been with a sausage in my mouth”

“Yet.” Hep quips back. I almost spit the food out, I wasn’t expecting such a quick comeback. Around bites of the food we discuss personal matters. I tell him I’m from earth and died after a convoy attack in the Iraq war. I used to be human, but lost a bet with Hel. I find out he is originally from Wisconsin and was in the national guard but died back in WWI. He’s in a dwarf’s body as a racial swap, he had to grind, and its still going to set him back literal years. Apparently its EXP expensive, but he’s happy with it. That’s cool, maybe eventually I can regain my humanity, not that I'm sure I want it anymore, this body at the stage it is right now is miles above what my human body was in peak condition. Thank's be to Odin that Hel didn't make me a slime or something.

As a byproduct of stashing his EXP Hep hasn’t made it through to LVL 6 yet. He says most people break through to LVL 5 quickly, 3-4 easy missions should put me at the higher end of 4, or in the lower end of 5. If I’m willing to risk a regular level mission I can probably cut it down to 1 regular and another easy or two for the same effect. The kicker is that after level 5 EXP demands for level increase exponentially.

After we clear away the meal we can get into the meat of why we’re here.

-MISSION COMPLETE-

Goblin subjugation- Easy.

10/10 goblins

1/1 boss(ORC)

-Side mission errant lovers-

-Kelly 1/1

-Mike-0/1

50% completion

-SIDE QUEST-

-Something funky going down-

-Discovered someone was experimenting on monsters and humans and punished the perpetrator.

100% complete

-Bonus complete-

-BATTLE SUMMARY-

-Orc killed > 20 EXP

-Goblin killed > 10 EXP

-Goblin killed > 10 EXP

-Goblin killed > 10 EXP

-Goblin killed > 10 EXP

-Goblin killed > 10 EXP

-Goblin killed > 10 EXP

-Goblin killed > 10 EXP

-Goblin killed > 10 EXP

-TOTAL-

+100 EXP

-SKILL-

Pick pocket- LVL 3

Deft hands and loose morals are all you need to get some of the best goodies for free.

-Activating Pick pocket automatically initiates a chance to access to targeted physical inventory.

-Failure results in target notificatin of target owner.

-5 SP(SEC) Dexterity, and Agility modifiers added to Initial roll.

> Pick pocket can be activated as a manual skill resulting in a higher chance of success.

-STATUS UPDATE-

-You now owe lady Hel a small favor.

-MISSION REWARDS-

-Main mission completion 100% > +200 EXP

-Side mission completion 100% > +100 EXP

-Side mission completion 50% > +50 EXP

-EXTRA INFORMATION-

-Innocent killed > -50 EXP

-Innocent killed > -50 EXP

-TOTAL-

+250 EXP

-Training voucher

Fuck me sideways, Doug must not have been that bad of a guy. I feel like a shitbag for killing him but there was no way for me to know. I guess it's something I'm going to have to deal with eventually. Maybe something in my head broke when I came through to this realm, I feel like something tantamount to murder should bother me more. Hope that doesn't come back to bite me in the ass. Maybe I'm just exhausted.

350 EXP doesn’t seem like a whole bunch for what I did, but as I’m not sure how much I can do with it I shouldn’t be too downtrodden. “All right Hep, I’m sitting at 350 EXP, and got a something called a training voucher.” he wasn’t paying attention and my random speaking makes him jump.

“That’s not bad for a first mission, 200-600 EXP can be expected anywhere in the Easy spectrum, of missions if you don’t include side missions, modifiers, or EXP you are going to pick up from monsters. You can also sell any loot you pick up for EXP or coinage.” He takes a pull from his mug and continues “You can sell loot at the keypads in the bottom floor of the great-hall. You can also use them to upgrade your stats, and skills. The only other place to upgrade yourself is in your owned space, or at the home of someone you have registered as a friend.”

Makes sense, Ianata said that I could only upgrade every seventh day in the rift, or if I died. I can roll with this. “Thanks man, mind if I add you to my friend list?” after he gives me an affirmative I will to have a request to add him to my SYSTEM friends list. With the list, I’ll be able to see any information he wants to share. It can tell me if he is in town, or the rift. At the basic function were able to send short messages to one another, or have a chat if were within 20 Meters. I can upgrade it to the point where the only time I can't contact someone is if they are in a different dimension than me, that seems like a good invstment. It’s the stalkers paradise of social media. You can set your status if you will it though, so it’s not that bad.

“So, what’s the Training voucher about?” he looks excited about it. “Training vouchers are a guaranteed drop for every mission you take up till LVL 5, or the completion of your tenth mission. They become a rare drop after that.” Good to know, I wonder what it does though. “The training voucher is good for almost anything, you can learn a Skill, some traits, add different avenues of approaches to your missions, selling them at the Bazaar will net you 3-5 gold depending on the market that week, or the system will buy them straight out as loot for 2 gold. They’re not super rare, but in my opinion they are probably one of the best drops you can pick up, even for the upper level guys.”

That sounds fantastic, That changes everything for me. I can get my racial traits back at almost free. Damn, that brings up another issue “How do favors work, I was being facetious and now I owe lady Hel a favor” he leans back a little and whistles loudly. “You’re going to be a hoot boy, all right, favors are things tradable in the SYSTEM if depending on what someone asks the system will determine whether it fits the small, medium, or large category small usually ranges anywhere from asking you to escort them someone, to giving them a small item. Medium they can ask you to do something a bit compelling you to personally withdraw from a battle, or a medium level item. Large favors are the doozy. If you owe someone a large favor they can compel you to switch sides in a battle, or give them a large item. Those are all examples; the favors range in pretty much any direction. The only thing that is constant is that they must equal out, someone who you owe a small favor to for borrowing a can of food cannot ask you to trade for a small weapon. That whole balance thing again.”

“Ahh, so she doesn’t necessarily have me by the balls, it’s gotta be an equal exchange.”

“I can think of far less favorable things than putting your balls into a beautiful goddess’s hand.”

“I guess you got me there." I barely manage to cover my mouth before a yawn escapes "I hate to pick your brain and run, but I haven’t slept in literally days’ man, I am barely standing at this point. I’ll catch you later?” It feels like a shitty thing to do, but I really am running on fumes. I only asked in the first place because a lack of the information I needed could mean a lot of pain in the future.

“yeah bud, you go on and get some shut-eye. It’s been a hell of a day one for you.” He gives my hand a quick shake and starts moving towards Ellet.

I’m barely cognizant but manage to avoid running directly into anyone on my walk back to my room. I make sure my door closes behind me, and fall asleep on the couch with my legs hanging over the side.

I’m sitting on the porch of a small dock-house at my best-friend’s house with a fishing pole against the rail and a bottle of whiskey in my hand watching a light rain pock the ponds normally serene surface. The smell of recently-cut grass and fresh rain on dirt are welcome companions to my lazy day. Behind me and up the hill I can hear light shoes scuffing on gravel coming down to the dock-house. I’m not worried, I understand this is a dream.

A few seconds later lady Hel comes around the corner she’s dressed completely different in a long white dress with her hair pleated around the crown of her head, now that her arms are bare it's hard not to notice the muscle definition, and even harder not to see the light red swirl patterns on her skin. She walks up the steps and takes the seat across from me. I take a deep drink off the bottle in my hand, “I didn’t know it was going to be that kind of dream, but it's a hell of a lot better than what I was doing.”

“I’m not part of your dream Gnome. I may not be your patron god, but I have duties that need to be discharged all the same.” The predatory aura she had when I first met her is non-existent and she looks incredibly sad. “This is the worst part of my job, being a goddess has its perks, but same as most things, to have good you must have bad. I am going to offer you the chance to see your funeral. This is the only time this will be offered, and your last chance to see the people you love. Very few of the people you loved even belong in Valhalla and a majority of those who do will not make the choice to come here, they are not warriors like you are. They do not enjoy the struggle, the strife that you find peace in. As much as it pains me I suggest you take my offer, the regret you may feel from skipping this chance at closure might destroy you one-day.”

Taking another deep drink from the bottle I set it down, I know she’s right. Fucking hell this is going to hurt. “Thank you, lady Hel, I accept.”

She stands offering me her hand “stand up Daniel, and take my hand. we will proceed when you are prepared.” I stand up, dust my hands off on my pants and take her hand. “I’m ready.”

Reaching my hand out I intertwine her fingers with mine, I can’t help but notice how soft and petite her hands are. I feel like a brute with my scarred and calloused hand inside her perfect digits. Considering how terrifying she was the first time I met her its causing a bit of conflict in my head.

“No one will be able to see, hear, or touch us, we will be slightly out of shift with your dimension.” She snaps her fingers and we are standing in outside of an open-sided tent in a graveyard. There are chairs set in a horseshoe shape around a plain oak casket with a flag draped across it. About 50 feet off to the side there are 7 soldiers standing at attention with rifle butts resting against the grass next to their feet. There are a few people walking around handing out glasses wrapped in black cloth.

The people handing out glasses finish their task and I hear a voice “Daniel was not known for being emotional, and he disliked large groups of people. Suffice it to say he would hate this,” my best friend from the Army Kevin is standing at the head of my casket holding one of the glasses in his hand “he was an abrasive, curt, alcoholic.” Damn he’s going to rip me apart at my own funeral, I stand there in shock. This isn’t what I expected at all.

“But he was the best of us. Never once did I see him say no to an honest request. He’d push himself past point where the rest of us had already given up. He’d say how much he couldn’t stand his job, then turn around and give the Iraqi kids snacks and drinks he’d bought with his own money. Most of all he wanted to help people. I saw, and heard him engage an ambush with no chance of survival so the rest of us could walk away. I’ll never forget what he did, and my only regret is not being able to tell him that.” He takes a shaky breath and I hear him whisper “I hope I don’t fuck this up.” Under his breath

“He once joked to me that the only way he would have a funeral was if there was drinking involved. Little did I know he put that in his will. So, I hope you will all join me in raising a glass to another warrior gone too soon.” He raises his cup up and starts a toast.

“Here's to cheating, stealing, fighting, and drinking.

If you cheat, may you cheat death.

If you steal, may you steal a woman's heart.

If you fight, may you fight for a brother.

And if you drink, may you drink with me.”

All the people in the crowd who served with me shout "Ready and Forward" and down their glasses. After a few seconds you can hear a few people coughing. Most of my civilian friends and family were never into whiskey. It doesn’t even register with me at that point though. I’ve fallen to my knees with tears streaming down my face. I endured 4 tours through two separate war-zones. I’ve been blown up nine times, shot four, stabbed once, and punched more times than I can count. None of that could hurt as bad as the pain in my chest at that moment. It was like someone had shoved a chainsaw into my chest. This is why I don’t do emotions. This is why I compartmentalize and never deal with things. Fuck this.

“I’ll give anything, anything Hel. Please make the pain stop, I can’t take it. Please. Please, godamn it please.” She drops to her knees in front of me, and pulls me into an embrace. “Were I willing to take that favor I could not. There is nothing I can do to change this. This is the way the world has to play out, it is the way of the world young one.” In between my sobbing I can hear orders being given.

“Port…Arms.” From the corner of my eye I can tell the honor guard’s movements are crisp and precise as the bring their rifles up and hold them diagonally across their chest’s. “Ready…” the charging handles are slammed to the rear so smoothly it sounds like they are one single weapon “Fire.” They put their rifles and fire each fire off a round with a precision and timing that can only be gained by being to more comrade’s funerals than should ever be expected of anyone “Ready……. Fire……Ready……Fire” the last shot rings out and echoes for what feels like an eternity. Despite the fire in my chest I feel empty on the inside, feeling that somehow I have let these people down. Like I could have done more for them.

Hel runs her fingers through my hair “You did all that was expected of you and more, the belittlement of your own accomplishments tarnishes their resolve.” I don’t know how long we sit there on the green grass of the cemetery ground with me trapped inside of my own pain and self-pity, but by the time I have gotten ahold of myself the casket is in the ground and people are getting in their cars. “Is there anyone else you would like to see?” her voice is barely a whisper but the pity in it hammers my soul.

“No, I…thank you. I didn’t know.... I’m sorry you have to bring people through this, but I’m glad you do. It would have destroyed me going through this alone, it's not something I'm sure I could have came back from.” The smile she gives me is small. looking into her eyes I cannot even begin to judge the depth of the pain in them. "Your a kind soul Gnome, most curse me for putting them through this not realizing the damage that is being avoided." I will only have to do this once, how long has she been doing this? Being a god looks good on the outside, but I’m not sure I could do what she does to keep divinity.

She stands and takes my hand, as she pulls me up the background shift’s back to the dock-house on the pond. I keep hold of her hand as I pick up my bottle of whiskey and walk to the railing over the lake. Taking a swig, I offer her the bottle. “This is my favorite one. The apple flavor softens the blow of the alcohol aftertaste, but it's still got a pretty high content.” She takes the bottle and takes a timid sip, “this is delicious! I have never had a drink with these hints of flavor, the alcohol taste barely registers.” That smile is a killer. Were I back in the regular world, and Hel a regular woman...well probably nothing, women that look like that didn't deal with guys that had looked like me without money.

“When was the last time you had some spirits from my earth? The last hundred years or so of my world there was an explosion of experimentation with beer, and other alcohol.” After she takes another drink I take the offered bottle back and take a couple of gulps.

“It’s a beautiful time to be alive.”