“Fooooood… huuungry… I need food… meat… master feed me…”

Neira moaned and grumbled lying prone beside the fire. After two hours of her prancing through the woods, all nearby critters either hid in their burrows or turned to bloody mush. With no more toys to break her boredom she went back to the camp.

“Huh?! Meat! I smell meat! Gimme!”

“Go away you slob. You’re not getting any until Joe says so.”

Savile stomped the moaning demi into the ground. After an unexplained case of midnight snacking, Joe rescinded Neira’s rights to pull food out from his inventory.

“Speaking of which, where is he?”

“No idea.”

Neira sat up and cast an annoyed glance at her surroundings. Playing a slob without Joe present wasn’t as fun as she hoped.

“It was just those two, playing house when I came back, and I am not sleeping in that.”

She pointed at a tent that somehow, thanks to their combined effort managed to look menacing. As if it were to collapse any moment and skewer its occupants with its poles.

“Freloader?”

“Alia! My name is Alia! Why do you…”

“Whatever. You’re just a temporary so stop complaining and answer. Where did that lunatic go? Why did you even let him go alone in the first place?”

“And what was I supposed to do you damn furball?! He told me to set up camp! Was I supposed to disregards his orders?!”

Both demi looked at each other then back to the infuriated human.

“Well, yeah? You can piss all you want on his orders. Joe hardly ever enforces them.”

“What?!”

Neira rubbed an itch under her left breast while she looked for an example.

“Now that I think of it, has he ever used the seal to compel us to anything?”

Savil put on thoughtful look.

“What about that time he ordered you to sleep?”

“Ah. Right. Forgot about that one. Well, he used it once.”

A wide grin spread on the demi’s face. Joe bought them a whole bag of happy cookies before he learned what they were for and how to use them. While those two boneheads with chock full of constitution felt little more than a tingle in their groins after stuffing their faces full of that culinary extravaganza, Neira became quite clingy after one cookie. After two she felt hot. After the third… she couldn’t remember what happened after the third one but soon after Joe put her to sleep.

“Then what about this codex thing?! You mean to tell me that’s too just for show?”

“Nah, that thing is real and…”

Prompted by a sound no one else heard, Neira sprung to her feet and took a stance ready for combat. At the same time Savile put herself between her and the two sitting women. She did so in the last moment when something began rustling within the nearest bush.

Spitting out grass and dirt, Joe emerged from between the rustling leaves and joined them but the fire.

“Joe?”

“No. Your friendly neighborhood grave digger. Who did you expect?”

He plucked his right nostril with his finger and snorted out a chunk of earth covered in snot. An angry red bump the size of a plum occupied the middle of his forehead.

“What in seven hells happened to you?”

“Oh, nothing much. A case of miscommunication. Had to dig myself out of it. You got anything?”

“One buck and two birds. Aside from monsters everything else is avoiding this place.”

“Good. I can live with that. Clean that buck up and tossed it over fire.”

“Mastah! Feeeeed meeee….”

Neira clung to his leg.

“Get lost pig. You eat too much.”

Joe shook her off and left her moaning on the ground. He wished to say something but stopped when he saw his tent twitching in the evening wind.

“How the fuck did you two freeloaders managed to fuck this up?”

With a deafening ‘sproing’, the tent collapsed onto itself, impaling a solitary blanket the two put it there.

“You know what? I don’t care. I just spent two hours digging myself out of a grave. If you cant’t even put a tent in that time, then you aren’t sleeping in one.”

“I hate you.”

Alia groaned.

“Not my problem.”

Between being buried alive and fried like some potato chips, Joe had no strength to care. His necromancer class leveled up once more. Enough to prompt a bazillion of screens, which he swatted away like a bunch of mosquitoes.

Although one annoying screen remained. One he could not dismiss.

You have discovered a hidden quest! Buried love Part 1 Reward : Unknown Would You like to accept it? Yes Yes

No way in hell he is going to click that.

“Mastah! Feeeeeeeeeeeed Meeeeeeeeeeeee!!!”

Neira tackled him to the ground.

As he fell, Joe could swear he saw a female hand with long ruby nails move the screen just enough for his face to smash yes as crashed.

Congratulations! You have accepted the hidden heroic quest Buried love!