The Bathrobe Knight: Volume 3 (23 page)

“The betrayer quest line . . . But . . .” Minx, who was also edging closer to some of the enemies, was likely thinking the same as Daniel: that they were going to do the stabbing very soon. Valerie’s directive left her with a very confused look on her face.

“Oh! That’s right, you don’t have the scroll you need. One second, let me find it in my inventory!” Valerie opened up her inventory’s console and started to edit a parchment she had looted from one of the old Fire-Walker areas they had explored with Daniel and Mclean. In the middle of the parchment, in big letters, she wrote: “
Have the Blue-Drakes hunt down only this group’s returning dead. Don’t let them reach the camp before Darwin and Kitchens return.”
She then handed the scroll to Minx. “This should be it. Remember that only the guard on the top of the mountain will let you approach him without attacking,” Valerie said to the bewildered-looking girl.

“Alright! I got it!” She took off with Daniel, circling around the wall to head up Mt. Lawlheima.

“So, this betrayer quest, it gets rid of the NPC guards?” The leader guessed, looking rather amazed as he watched Minx leave. “Like, every NPC?”

“Trust me, by the time a fight starts, you won’t have to worry about a single NPC,” Valerie beamed. “There are a few more steps, but this starts the process.”

“That’s stupendous!” the leader said.

Valerie couldn’t agree more.
This has turned out to be one stupendous event after the next--for me. Now, I just need to wait on our heavy artillery swordsmen to get here and start cleaning up the . . .
Her mind was rattled as she saw what looked like Darwin, still in his bathrobe like the demonic bathrobe king he was, cutting White-Wings in half as they tried to assault him . . .
On a beach?
She saw the water surging over and ebbing back across his feet, futilely attempting to wash the gore away.
Seeing him for the first time was awe-inspiring. He was like the devil himself ripping angels in half,
she reflected on the memory.
There wasn’t anything he couldn’t do . . .

But no sooner had that thought popped into her head than she saw a new Darwin. The two images almost overlapped, his new blurred image next to the first on the beach fighting. It was an image of Darwin’s face, covered with anxiety and confusion as he stared out over a field of battle.
He wears an exterior of confidence like it is just another suit of armor, but he’s . . . He’s scared. He’s terrified. He’s wearing the face as if this were his last and only battle.
Then, the image of Tim’s death and the flight of Mclean and Daniel into the Fire-Walker boss appeared on the sides of the two conflicting Darwins.
They all knew they were going to die. They all knew that it was inevitable. One group thought they would respawn and that their death would pass like a gentle breeze, one didn’t understand he couldn’t truly die, and one knew his passing was an inevitability that would permanently separate him from the one he cared about--but they were all the same. They all acted without consideration, wearing that confidence as their armor. They all faced death with a smile, yet here I am, waiting like a rat in a hole for the cat to pass.

“You there?” the leader asked. Valerie had been so lost in thought that she hadn’t realized he was trying to talk to her.

“Oh, yeah, I was just thinking about something I could do to help you out, to thank you for your rescuing me beyond simply sharing this quest with you.” Valerie beamed another smile at him, knowing what she actually
wanted
to do.

“There really isn’t a need for that,” the man almost blushed.

“Oh, trust me, this is something you are going to
want
to miss.” She approached him, sliding the dagger into her hands.

“You mean something I am
not
going to want to miss, right?” He laughed, thinking he was correcting her simple mistake.

“No, no, dear. I didn’t.” She put one arm around him and leaned in to kiss him on the cheek. “I just wanted to thank you for being such a helpful pawn,” she whispered into his ear after her lips parted from his fur-covered cheek. The knife blade, hidden by the way she angled her hand, finally revealed itself to him as it pierced through the thin skin under his jaw and slid into his brain.

The others, some of whom had watched in envy as she leaned in to give him a peck on the cheek, were too shocked to react immediately. Valerie, who hadn’t expected their befuddlement to give her such a boon, quickly took advantage and slipped her other dagger into another player’s gut before pushing off the ground and taking to the air. She hadn’t made it more than half a foot in the air before she noticed that her wings weren’t carrying her like they used to. She wasn’t getting the same lift she had grown accustomed to feeling, and she struggled to press upwards into the air so she could get proper altitude for her next dive.
Crap, crap, I’m going to die . . .
She smiled.
Well, they wouldn’t have run anyway. They would have fought to the bloody end, even if they knew they were going to die.
She couldn’t help but laugh as she remembered the image of Darwin struggling to keep on fighting, even as Daniel organized his unwilling exit from the fight with the Panda King’s forces.

When did I ever shy away from doing the right thing? When did I ever worry about my life in a video game?
She laughed to herself--really at herself--as she tried to find a target near Kass and Mclean in the fight that had broken out after her betrayal. She wasn’t actually concerned if either of them died before adjusting to the skirmish. She knew, in her heart, that neither would mind dying in a good fight.

Let’s do this!
She turned mid-air and dove one last time, knowing in the back of her head that if she didn’t land on a cushiony bag of meat her death was certain. She could feel her wings slowly deteriorating as she turned around and angled her descent towards the closest foe, the wind painfully ripping the feathers from her wings. By the time she had landed feet and blades first, right into a poor, fat Ursine, her wings had already reached the point of non-functionality, and Valerie knew that her death was assured.
Three down,
she thought.
How many more are there to go?
She laughed as she remembered the game she played with Mclean and Daniel in the Fire-Walker chamber.

Before she could even make it to her fourth victim, a roar pierced the sky and rivers of fire shot down around her. The Blue-Drakes, with Minx at the helm, flew down in a V-formation like a flock of migrating ducks, spewing fire all over the cluster of distracted foes.

“Sorry, Val! I was going to wait for you, but Darwin’s almost here, and we didn’t want to miss the party!” Minx said, deftly jumping off her Blue-Drake and landing behind Mclean. She positioned herself so the two were back to back, each holding their daggers at the ready. Unfortunately for the two, the flames had engulfed almost all of the fur-balls, turning the entire would-be fight into a toasty barbeque featuring a wide array of different types of meat.

“I see you guys have been busy,” Darwin laughed as he stepped out of the forest. “We were worried we wouldn’t make it in time. How did you all fare over here?”

“We got attacked by two large groups, but Val went weird like a cuckoo clock and saved us, so it’s okay . . . But is she?” Minx looked over at Valerie, who was standing in the middle of the circle of the burning oil and fire the Blue-Drakes had painted the ground with.

“Valerie, what happened to your wings?” Darwin asked, stepping over the fire.

“Huh?” she said, looking down at the remaining stubs of what had once been her proud and majestic wings, her joy as a White-Wing, lying on the ground next to her. “Oh . . . crutches shouldn’t be kept after you’re whole.”

“Crutches? But aren’t you a White-Wing? Isn’t that your identity, not a crutch?” Darwin asked, confused.

Sigh. Does everyone have to spell everything out for you? I can’t tell if you’re brilliant or dense or both sometimes.
Valerie decided she would let him off the hook this time. “If that were the case, my eyes wouldn’t be so pretty,” she joked, making light of the matter. “I’m a Demon, after all,” she admitted, knowing that the combination of her red eyes and lack of wings meant that there would be no simple way to hide the fact.
Unless, of course, there is a magic flight spell and an illusion spell and . . . Well . . . No, that’s just too much effort.

“You’re a Demon?” Darwin said more than asked, but the pitch was still slightly higher at the end, so it still came across as a question.

“Apparently so,” Valerie replied and nodded. “Actually, maybe the two of us can talk privately later.” Valerie added, looking around at the others who were staring at her and Darwin.

“I’d like that,” Darwin agreed. He probably understood her sentiments. “But the question still stands: Are you okay?”

“I’ve never been better,” she responded, beaming. “Today was . . . Well, it was a lot of fun,” she answered honestly. There wasn’t a single trace of deceit in her voice. Even though she relived losing the ability to move in a way that had for so long felt natural, having it suddenly yanked away from her as her wings had been cast aside in the transformation, she just couldn’t help but be happy. The wings weren’t a part of her. They truly were a crutch, a crutch she would never need again now that she was whole once more.

Darwin
:

              “So . . .” Darwin fumbled for the right words to propel the conversation past the stalled out stutter that the two seemed to be locked in, half-expecting Valerie to fill in the words for him. The two stared at each other, waiting for the other to begin, their red eyes meeting in a stare that oddly felt even more intimate than the ones he shared with Stephanie.

“So . . .” Valerie passed the ball back to him.

Great, so I have to fill in the dialogue.
Darwin’s eyes darted to the table between the two of them as he tried to figure out where to start.

When Darwin and Valerie had both agreed they needed to talk about things, Justin had been more than happy to accommodate their privacy requirements. Apparently, while everyone else had been out trying to figure out how to make their home safer, there had also been plenty of hard workers who had decided to take the initiative and turn the entire dungeon into a more comfortable living space. They had constructed a myriad of different buildings, each hewn from the basic raw materials that were available to them. Indeed, many of the new edifices embodied various different elements based on what they were constructed from.

While a handful of the buildings were identical in layout and design--stacked on top of each other like chips trying to reform a potato--it was clear that the vast majority had radically different architects. They sat side by side with more than a dozen dissimilar drystone designs. They were, for the most part, assembled from similar types of stones, a thing that Darwin hadn’t been able to tell if the game had generated naturally or the diggers and workers who unearthed them had worked to achieve, but there were also some that were made from wood. Such was the one Darwin and Valerie were currently in. It was a quaint, humble-looking log cabin on the middle of an empty platform, barely large enough inside to afford the space needed to fit around the three-foot-wide square table that Valerie and Darwin were currently seated at.

Not saying anything at first, Darwin’s eyes darted across her face. He couldn’t tell if it was her bone structure or even the puffiness of her lips that matched his sister, but for some reason, he couldn’t help but think about Eve.
With just a change in the color of her eyes and the paleness of her skin, she looks like an entirely different person. Or is it the wings? From blue eyes and wings to red eyes and flightless, I guess I’ll be hearing the story of fallen angels turning into demons one more time today,
he mused. He was curious what her own inner monologue must be like as she processed the change.
I was born like this, but she just fell into it. Is it because of the guild?
“Is it because of me?” he pondered, the words almost inaudible as they escaped his lips. His eyes moved across her skin like a climber’s free hand searching for something to hold onto that would give him a better grip on where to start the conversation.
And why does the atmosphere here feel like a confession scene in an old-school anime?
He sighed as the tension of the moment weighed on his chest.
What do I even say to someone I might have turned into a Demon?

“Maybe,” Valerie answered his mumbled inquiry with a bit of a laugh and a half-sigh of her own, the converging nature of those two expressions somehow easing the heaviness of the sparse dialogue. “It might be because of you; it might be because of the game or the guild.”

“Is it in real life too? Do you also have the strength and the red eyes?” Darwin had to ask, knowing that his own fiendish identity in the game was due to his real-life condition and that, if her situation were similar, it might manifest itself in the same way as well.

“Yeah, but there is more to it,” Valerie started. “I can feel my feet again. I can move my legs again in real life.”

“Again?” Darwin looked at her with a raised eyebrow. “You couldn’t before?”

“No.” A frown flashed across her face before twisting rapidly back into a smile. “But this morning I could. It wasn’t one hundred percent. I didn’t just wake up and have a working pair of legs again, but there was feeling--there was pain and movement. It’s something the doctors told me all those years ago would never happen again. I didn’t have any idea what was going on until my mother pointed out my red eyes, and I remembered that I knew someone who had a similar set of looking-goggles--someone else with red eyes--so I got online to talk to you.”