The Bathrobe Knight (28 page)

“My hero,” the woman said, giving him a golfer’s clap. “Should I always expect the person who rescues me to be so dashing and thorough about it.”

“You shouldn’t always expect to be rescued,” Qasin said, his instincts telling him that something was off about this red-eyed woman.

“But then how would poor little old me ever get where I need to go?” she asked, clearly affecting a sultry tone as she sauntered closer to Qasin.

“Look, just be careful not to travel through dangerous zones alone.” He knew she was going to try to use him. Qasin had seen women move this way at the courts when they wanted something. But that itch that let him know everything his blade wasn’t doing was coming back already, and a distraction from it was more than welcome.

“Oh, but I’m not alone. I have you to escort me. You will escort me, right?”

Extra luggage.
Qasin frowned. “I suppose I can escort you for now, but I don’t think we are headed to the same place.”

“Really? I’m going to meet with the leader of the White-Horns,” she said, circling around Qasin and adding, “I have a terribly urgent request of him, and I need to notify him of some awful events that have happened.”

“But, aren’t you a Human? Why would you go to the White-Horn’s leader and not the Human Faction’s leader?”

“Oh him? He’s a terribly dull man who does nothing but listen to the idle chatter of fat, piggish Councilmen. Why, asking him to do anything would be a waste of my time and breath. I’m sure you understand,” she said, waving off the idea as if everyone should have known it was preposterous.

“I do . . .” he admitted. She may have been making fun of him, but he couldn’t have agreed with her more if this had been a week ago. Even the words she used to describe the Council felt like his own.

“So then, you know why I must go seek help from the White-Horns instead of the humans,” she said, the daggers of her words digging into his chest.

“I suppose I do,” he answered, deciding it was probably not in his best interest to tell her the person she was talking to was the King she had just mocked.

“Good. Then you know where I’m going, but I don’t know where my young hero is off to?”

“Oh, we’re headed to the same place.”

“Are you also seeking an audience with their ruler?”

“You could say that.”

“Well, good, then you can be both my dashing hero and my charming escort,” she said, wrapping herself around his left arm. “Now, let’s get going, dear.”

Qasin didn’t argue with her at all. He didn’t know her name, where she came from, or what dire information she needed to tell the White-Horn King, but he did know that he had already saved her life and agreed to escort her somehow. “Yes, milady.”

“Now, if you’re going to escort me, I think it’s only proper we get to know each other,” she said. “My name is Eve. What’s yours?”

“I’m Qasin,” the King said. Only after saying it did he remember he was still trying to hide his identity.

“Like the King?” she asked.

“Yeah, just like the King,” he mused.
It’s not technically a lie.

“Then that must explain your royal demeanor. You’re positively brimming with stuffy, entitled, sophisticated royalness. Why, one might even think you were a King yourself.”

“Are you sure you’re not talking about yourself?” Qasin deflected, wondering if he was really that stuffy.

“Oh, me too! For sure. But I’m a Queen, you know?”

“A Queen? Of what?”

“Oh, well, women must have their secrets. If I didn’t, then I wouldn’t be able to call myself a proper lady, now would I? So I’m afraid that little tidbit will remain a secret.”

“I see. So this meeting with the White-Horn leader will be diplomatic by nature then?”

“Not quite . . . do you know any restaurants along the way?”

“Can’t say I’ve ever been down this road, so I’m going to have to say
no
.”

“That’s too bad, you’ll have to find a nice place to treat me to a meal. I can’t be famished on my way, and you shan’t get away without fulfilling your role as my escort.”

“Yes, milady,” Qasin said for the second time in the conversation. He still felt like something was off about her, but he also felt like having her around would alleviate both his boredom and his growing thirst. “I’ll make sure it’s up to your standards.”

Kas
s
:

Kass always felt a mixture of admiration and horror as she watched her red-eyed friend tear into the flesh of his enemies. She had seen warriors fight before, and she knew their gorey, hack-and-slash melee visage well, but they were nothing like Darwin. When others fought, it was clear they were playing a game. They would either play out their attacks like turns, thinking before each strike, or just recklessly swing with abandon at the monster’s hit box hoping to do damage.

When Darwin fought, it was different: almost every hit landed with gore-creating precision on a vital spot, and his motions didn't even flow so much as creep like lingering death across a battle. It was a fine line of savage he walked: somewhere between an animal fighting for its very survival and a sadistic artist that considered his weapon as an instrument and a body as a masterpiece waiting to be painted with pain and cruelty.

Naturally, then, it often sent shivers down her spine when Darwin carved up forest monsters, but not this time. This time, it made Kass feel relief as he obliterated the horrendous and putrid Boars one after another. Just looking at them caused her stomach to do somersaults and her insides attempt an emergency evacuation through her mouth.
I need to have Dad find out what team designed these vile creatures and fire them. Then fire them from every future job require the designing or illustrating of anything on any medium
, she thought angrily. The only saving grace was that between her spells, Frost Edge and the new Frost Step, she could close her eyes and still contribute to the fight. With Frost Step [Level 1], she could increase Darwin’s movement speed by 5% while slowing the speed of all those within a 3-meter radius of him by 5%. Coupled with her Frost Edge [Level 3]’s 25% boost to damage for Darwin, she felt she’d contributed enough to justify gaining the experience in those fights where the visual was too much to take.

“So Darwin, you said you lived in Georgia, right?” Kass asked, doing her best not to look at the EXP sources Darwin was hacking in half.

“Yeah, why, what’s up?” he asked.

“Nothing, just wondering if you’re going to go to the Comic-Con convention in Atlanta coming up soon. I think my dad is dragging me, and I was debating if I should invite a few friends,” Kass said, slightly curious what her friend Darwin would be like in real life.

“Your dad is dragging you to Comic-Con?” he asked.

“Yeah. He has to go . . . part of work you could say. They do a lot of marketing, and he has to answer questions constantly at those events,” she said, not wanting to admit she actually usually begged to get brought along for the events since he generally had VIP access to everything.

“Really? So what are you planning on going as?” he inquired.

“Oh me? I’m not really sure what I am going as,” she said, trying her best not to let Darwin know that she had been planning the entire thing for months.

“I’ve always did want to go to one of those, but I’ve never had the time. They were always scheduled on event weekends.”

“So you avoided Comic-Con because of gaming events?” she asked in disbelief. Usually gaming brought people to the dorky events, not pushed them away.

“Yeah, if you want to put it that simply, I guess?”  

“Well, what about coming to this next one? You look like your avatar, right? Minus the red eyes?” she asked, trying to pry further.

“You could say our faces are identical, yeah.”

“Then pop on a bathrobe and come to the next one,” she pushed again.

“I would if I could, but I’ll be pretty occupied.

“You mean, you’ll be playing the game the entire day? Come on. One day of leveling missed won’t be a big deal, and it’ll be nice to have another friend to see all the events with. Half the fun of an event like Comic-Con is either making fun of or admiring the costumes, depending on how awful or well-made they are, of course,” she pushed.

“No, it’s okay. You go. I’d love to, but I’m kind of already trapped into something. Seriously though, thanks for the invitation,” he said, awkwardly scratching his head.

“Fine, fine, I’ll drop the subject. But you really should go to one, even without me one day. They’re absolutely a blast,” she said, feeling a bit like the creep herself for once.

As they rounded the next corner, Kass felt like she should have been surprised. Normally, if someone made it through a dungeon of grotesque Mutant pig-boar creations only to find a simple marble kitchen that looked like it was straight out of a Martha Stewart catalogue with a bunny cooking something on the island stovetop, they’d be shocked. But, between the poker-playing Bear and Buffy the Medusa, she honestly would have been taken aback more by a normal Boss.

The eight-foot-tall Rabbit, dressed in a suit with a monocle and a timepiece as if he was straight out of an Alice in Wonderland book, was in the middle of flipping some pancakes when he saw them. “Ahhh!” he shouted, messing up the flip and leaving the pancake he was making to land flat on his head between his long pointy ears.

“A bunny with a pancake on its head--why do I feel like I’ve seen that before?” Kass asked, staring at the very familiar sight.

“Not sure, but I’m actually going to say that that is cute.”

“Really? I thought men aren’t supposed to say things are cute.”

“Who said that?” Darwin asked indignantly.

“I don’t know. People?” Kass replied.

“Well, people are wrong. Things are cute, like a bunny with pancakes on its head,” Darwin insisted, both of them still stuck staring at the Rabbit curiously. It was indeed cute.

However, while they chatted back and forth, the bunny with the pancake on its head slowly grew bigger. It started off as a tall Rabbit to begin with, and each passing second it grew wider, turning it into something monstrous. Where there were only skinny arms, muscles started to pump up and veins began popping out. The clothes it was wearing slowly shredded as the muscles kept bulging bigger and bigger.

When it was finally done with its transformation, it looked like an eight-foot-tall steroid junkie trying to overdose.

“So . . .” Kass started, giving Darwin a look that said they needed to take care of the monster before they talked any more about where they had seen it before.

“Yeah, I got it,” Darwin said, dashing at the hulk bunny behind the island.

As Darwin hopped over the island and landed blade first on the bunny, who blocked the attack with his claws, Kass had to decide what type of spell would be best. There were a lot of fancy spells like Ice Dragon’s Dance, but each of them had a huge setback in terms of low DPS from long channeling times, low accuracy, or, even worse, the AoE Damage from the spell might send Darwin all the way back to spawn. It was for this reason that during most fights, no matter how hard she thought about what type of spell she wanted to use, she always ended up slamming her Staff into the ground and chain casting Snowball’s Chance as fast as she could. It was reliable, and it’s exactly what she did here.

Kass kept on casting the spell at the monster’s legs to help decrease its mobility too, all the way until Darwin did something that made her laugh so hard she couldn’t concentrate. During the fight, the cottontail had grabbed both of Darwin’s blades and was using its ears as a weapon to swing at Darwin. Darwin let go of his weapons, crouched to the floor and darted under the Rabbit’s legs. When the bunny turned around to attack him again the Rabbit was met with Darwin throwing two onions from the counter into its face and then chopping them up over and over again in mid air with a Butcher’s Knife he had found.