Author's Note: Thanks go to HellsReign for suggesting the title for this chapter. I was lacking one that I felt was suitable, and they came to the rescue -- and I think they did an excellent job with their choice of title. Many thanks, HellsReign. The assistance is appreciated.

Isabella’s thoughts came to me clear through the party connection, “What was that? What just happened?” They sounded shocked and concerned.

“Damned if I know,” I thought back honestly. “I found a super spike, and had a window pop up that gave me ten seconds to make a choice. I chose ‘Yes’, and now it seems I’ve bonded with it.”

“Are you coming back here, or should I come to you?”

“I’m fine. I’ll be back in a moment.” I couldn’t help but think-ask, “How’d you even know something had happened?”

“Well, I just leveled up. I got party experience, and I leveled up.” Isabella’s thoughts definitely sounded shocked.

“Wah?” I supposed mine were too. “Party experience? But I didn’t get any popup window saying anything about experience. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever gotten a window telling me I earned experience. Why did you get one?”

A few moments pause until Isabella’s thoughts came back to me. “I don’t know for certain. Perhaps it has to do with some sort of class bonus? Or maybe a penalty attached to your title or name? Most of the things in this game seem to give penalties as well as bonuses, like the ‘Oathbound’ namesake. It gives an experience bonus if conditions are met, but stops all experience if they’re not. Coming back from the dead seems like a huge bonus. It probably has some sort of drawbacks as well, don’t you think?”

I thought about it for a moment, and it makes sense to me. Like that old saying goes, ‘Give a man a nickel, take away a dime.’ Nothing given, without a price paid.

“I’m coming. I’ll be there in just a moment,” came Isabella’s next thought.

“You don’t have to,” I thought back to her, but I could already see her dashing naked down the hallway towards me.

A moment later, she bounced up and hugged me. I had to be careful not to jab her with any of the quills that I had already picked up and were holding. “I’m here,” she said while wrinkling her nose up like a bunny rabbit’s.

Seeing my load of quills, she bent down and picked half a dozen up off the floor. “Here, I’ll help load you up with these. Hold out your arms.” I looked at her a little oddly, and she giggled. “You were trying to grab all these, weren’t you?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Then hold out your arms like you’re carrying firewood and I’ll load you up,” she told me with another giggle. “And then we can get out of here and back into the room out of this smell and sort out what just happened.”

It took me a moment to rearrange the quills I’d already tucked under my arm, but soon I was standing there with both arms out in front of me in “the firewood carrying” pose, where Isabella then proceeded to stack all the nearby scattered quills into my arms. The “tail spike” was on the bottom of the pile for now. A few moments later, we were going down the hallway and back into the room, where I dumped all the quills down onto the kitchen table for now.

Isabella shut and locked the door and then hopped up on her favorite couch and tucked her legs under her cross-legged. “So,” she sounded serious and not giggly for a change, “tell me what happened.”

I flopped down in the chair across from her – I always liked the view from here – and I just shrugged my shoulders. “I really don’t know. I was gathering the quills that had fell from the Rat Boss, and I saw something under the junk scattered around there. I picked it up and it was that extra-large spike, and once I had a grip of it in my hands, a popup appeared and asked me if I wanted to bond with it. It said it only had one bonding left, and I only had ten seconds to decided, so I said yes at the last second.”

Isabella looked at me with her eyebrows wrinkled up together. “And what does a bonding do?”

“I dunno. I just thought it might be something good and the timer was running out.”

Her left eyebrow twitched noticeably. “And what made you think it was something good?”

“I dunno!” Again, I just shrugged my shoulders, and now both her eyebrows were twitching and she was chewing on her lower lip. It was kind of cute, to be honest.

“Wait a moment.” She was talking kind of slow for some reason, but her fingers were tapping quite rapidly on her legs. “Let me see if I understand. A strange window pops up and tells me that there’s something that can only happen once.”

“Yep!” I confirmed.

Twitch. Twitch. Tap. Tap. “And you had ten seconds to decline the effect?”

“Or accept it.” I don’t think she realized that I was being told to make a choice.

“And you had no idea what this effect was?” I wonder if it was just my imagination, but it seemed like she was turning a little whiter.

“Well, not really. Just a one time chance to bind something. I didn’t want it to slip away.”

“And just what,” her voice was sounding all slow and kind of creepy; I don’t think I like it very much, “made you think that if you said ‘no’, that the charge would be used up? If you would’ve declined, wouldn’t the item still have one chance to bind with someone?”

“Oh!” I suddenly gasped as I saw what she was saying. “It probably would have! I wouldn’t have used it, so it would have been there still and I could have accepted after we’d had some more time to study that tail better!”

‘AAAHHHHHH!!” Isabella screamed, grabbed a pillow off from the couch and threw it at me. It didn’t really hurt, but I was smart enough not to tell her that. “You idiot! What if it was something bad and you cursed yourself or something! What if it was some type of bomb? ‘Do you want to detonate this bomb? 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1?’ SURE! I’m an idiot! KABOOM!!”

Well, she had a point I suppose. “I’m sorry.” Nothing to do now but apologize. I can’t undo what’s been done any more than I can undo what hasn’t been done.

Letting out a deep sigh, Isabella got up, crossed the few feet between us, and then slapped me across the face. That didn’t hurt either, but I’m not telling her. Then she reached down, grabbed my head, pulled it between her breasts, and hugged me tightly for several long moments before she finally let go.

“Well, can I at least see this thing that you binded with? Whatever that is.” She still sounded worried for some reason, but it was obvious that I was fine.

“Sure!” I tried to sound enthused, but I was kind of dreading it. I’d messed up again, and knowing my luck she was going to tell me something like ‘Congratulations, you have no joined the rat race.’ I pointed over to the sink. “It’s the big one in there.”

Isabella walked over and moved most of the small quills out of the sink and then she went to pick up the big spike, but she stopped with her hand inches above it. I saw her stare off into space, and I knew she was reading something. A moment later, she turned around and looked at me with a puzzled expression on her face and said “Yes.”

DING!

YESNO

Instantly a window popped up that just had two choices on it. “YES” or “NO”. I wasn’t saying or touching a danged thing until I ran it past Isabella first. “There’s a floater here asking me for a response.”

“Just asking for a response?” Isabella’s eyebrows wrinkled up towards the top of her forehead again. “I had a notification that told me the item I was trying to touch was bonded to another and that I had to ask to be included on the user list, and then asked if I wanted to request permission.”

“Well, all I get us a,” I nodded my head up and down, “and a,” I nodded my head left to right,” box. Phew! That’ll almost make you dizzy.

“Go ahead and accept if you will,” Isabella said.

“Sure. YES!” My window popped out, and that was it for me, but I can tell Isabella was reading something in front of her again.

Slowly she reached it out and picked up the black spike in her hands, and then she studied it for several moments. Finally she sighed shook her head. “I don’t have the skill necessary to identify that type of weapon. I have some points where I leveled up though, and I can buy the Appraise: Weapon skill now, if I want it. I just don’t know if buying it will be enough to let me identify it without practice. Give me a moment.”

She poked her fingers at thin air, tapping a few screens that I couldn’t see, and then she picked up the spike and turned it over left and right and studied it once again, before she finally handed it back towards me. “I’m sorry, I don’t have the talent to identify it currently. I guess I need to start learning more about weapons now that I have the skill, and once I level the ability up I might be able to tell you something useful. From what I can tell though, it appears as if you have yourself a weapon there that no one can take or use without your permission. I couldn’t even touch it without you giving me permission. I just got the stupid dokey-dokey when I tried and a popup telling me I didn’t have permission from the owner.”

“Oh! So it’s nothing bad?” I was relieved!

“Not this time, it isn’t.” Isabella shook her finger at me, “But next time, who knows? You have got to be more careful. From now on, let the timer run out if you have to. I’d rather give up something good than accept something bad. There’s enough bad stuff in the world here already which we have to deal with.”

I hung my head and nodded. “You’re right. I’ll be more careful from now on.” Saying that, I promptly tested the tip of the rat’s tail with my finger and blood dripped out, but I was careful not to let Izzy see it! This thing was much sharper and pokier than I thought it would’ve been!

Izzy came over and snuggled herself down in my lap and nuzzled up to me for a few quiet moments before she finally got up and stood up in front of me. Slowly, deliberately, she cupped one hands across each breast, covering it. “I’m sorry, “ she giggled, “but you don’t get to kiss them. You had to come back safely, and the only reason you’re safe this time is because you just got lucky. Luck doesn’t count, so no kissing for you.” She then stuck out her tongue at me and moved back over to stretch herself once more while picking up her book to read.

“What are you trying to learn?” I asked.

“Another one of the spells, if I can today while you’re scouting. It might be useful tomorrow. If not, I’m thinking it’ll be really useful soon for us.”

“Oh.” I just grunted and nodded. If she thought it’d help, I trusted her. “I guess I’ll get back out and take another look around and see what else is out there,” I told her. Distracted, already immersed in her stretching and reading, she just nodded slightly.

Giving a little sigh of relief, I got up and tucked the tail spike between my belt and me, and then picked back up my club. It looks like I now have another weapon to learn to use, and I’ve never used a tail spike before in battle. I’d probably have to start all over as the King Suck with it and train it up when I got a chance sometime.

As I was starting towards the door, I suddenly stopped. A light bulb! “Hey Izzy! You know, I bet I’ve figured something out!” I spun on my heels to watch her as I was chatting.

“Hmm, what’s that?” Slowly she straightened herself up out of her study position and sat down on the ground cross-legged. I was beginning to learn that that was often her ‘I’m focusing and paying attention to you’ way of sitting. It was cute.

“I bet I figured something out,” I repeated. “In a game, when you beat a boss monster, they usually drop some type of special loot right?”

She thought for a moment and then nodded towards me.

“Well, this world is now almost like a game, but not quite a game. Critters don’t just poof when they’re dead and instantly turn into coins or potions or swords and stuff. I’ve killed a lot of those rats, and they never turned into anything useful.”

“Well,” Izzy giggled, “I’d really be surprised if they did. One minute rat, next moment – poof -- a knife! If that would’ve happened, we would’ve starved to death!”

“Yeah,” but here was where I was grinning at, “but what if the boss creatures all still had some sort of loot item? A rat doesn’t have pockets, so he can’t just carry a sword or potions in them. What if, for some of the boss creatures, you had to collect the special item off from them some other way? Like this rat’s tail spike! It wasn’t until I killed the rats that I had a popup appear which kind of encouraged me to learn the Harvesting (Animal) skill. You know, I’d imagine that if I’d gotten a chance to use the skill on that rat, I could’ve harvested this spike myself!”

“I bet Boss Monsters still have some sort of special loot on them in this new game-world. They just don’t instantly poof and turn into one. You’ve got to look for it, and find out what it might be!” I was really excited at the idea! If I was right, that means that all sorts of creatures which a person would normally assume to be worthless, or just food or something, might instead be quite valuable.

Slowly Izzy mulled over the concept, and then she finally nodded. “You very well might be right. Many games have special rules where boss or elite monsters have special loot. Since this world has become so game-like, I don’t see why the creatures wouldn’t have some kind of reward for killing them. You did say that was some sort of Elite monster correct?”

“Yep,” I happily confirmed. “It was The Rat Champion. I had an information window pop up telling me congratulations for killing it.”

Isabella laughed lightly. “Then we might need to try and work on some other harvesting type skills as well. You were working on Harvesting (Animal), but what if we find an elite plant? What if we don’t even know what the special loot is? Like, what if the blood could be boiled and made some sort of special potion? There’s a lot of things we might want to consider, before we just up and kill another elite monster. We want to be as prepared as possible to find and harvest whatever it might have.”

“Yeah,” I said grinning as I turned and walked back out the door. “We got to get good. I want to see what that Jello-Muncher might drop, after he ate my corpse the way he did earlier. I couldn’t help but smile at the thought, as Isabella giggled and went back over and started to stretch back out to study on her book once again.

Shutting the door behind me, the odor didn’t seem quite as bad this time out in the hallway as it had before. I suppose thoughts of splatting and looting monstrous globs of Jello can help distract the mind away from the things that it doesn’t want to focus on, like the ever present stench of death.

I was almost starting to whistle merrily to myself when Isabella’s thoughts come to my head. “Drake, can you do something while you’re out there?”

“Sure, “ I thought back. “Whatcha need?”

“I noticed a lot of those corpses seemed to already have lost their flesh.” Somehow I had a bad feeling that I didn’t want to hear the rest of that thought, but Isabella sent it anyway. “Can you check them for any jewelry they might have been wearing? Earrings, necklaces, little studs. Anything like that would be great, if you could.”

“Do you really need it?” I shivered at the thought of actually poking through those mossy, mildew islands of liquefied rot to look for something as small as an earring.

“It’d be appreciated, if you don’t mind.” She made it sound so easy.

Blarg, I thought to myself! “Sure. I’ll see what I can do for you,” I answered back.

She said something back to me, but I’m afraid I didn’t hear it. I was dreading the mess that I’d agreed and gotten myself into this time…