Chapter 196: Afternoon Machinations
With the room cleared out, Erani and I were free to rifle through the documents as we pleased. We quickly located the correct metal drawer and looked through the contents until finding the stack of future job postings. They ranged from being slated to go up the next day—that was the majority of them—to a few from people like nobles or business owners being planned to go up weeks from now. Those were for things like construction projects, pushing out monster populations in certain locations or leveling out some terrain, that way they could start building the moment the job was done.
We looked around for the best jobs we could, committing them to memory, plus having Index read through them to memorize the jobs for good measure. Pretty much anything high-paying we paid attention to.
It wasn’t long before we found everything worth noting, having Index go through the much more manageable pile of papers to read. And then, we left.
The man we’d tied up was also left in the room behind us, of course, lying in the corner, bound and gagged as thoroughly as we could get him. Obviously, someone would eventually come across him, but due to the extremely long nature of his task, I hoped nobody would go looking for a while. At least, not for the next six hours.
So we exited the room and the guild lobby, heading out of town. Our mission hadn’t taken long at all, so Ainash was still nearby.
Soon, we saw her approaching, answering our call to meet up.
“Did you find important paper?”
“Yeah,” I responded, “we got everything we need. We should go ahead and transfer our memories now, though.”
“But why?” Ainash asked. “There is still lot more time before have to go back, correct?
“Yeah, but if there’s anything I’ve learned from having this ability, it’s that you can never actually predict when you’ll need to use it. We hope we’ll get the full six hours before needing to go back, but it’s best to get the most important information transferred now, while we still can.”
“Okay!”
“So I go first, right?” Erani asked.
“Right. You transfer your memories to Ainash, and then she transfers both yours and hers to me, that way I can give them back once I’ve activated Time Loop.”
Erani stepped forward, placing a hand on Ainash’s head and closing her eyes. I could see her facial expression change as she mentally exerted herself, pushing the memories through in as much detail as she could while still trying to keep things fast. What we’d found with our experiments beforehand was that, while you did need to put in a lot of detail in the transferred memory, you could still cut certain corners, if you knew what you were doing.
In general, the longer a memory was, the less detail it needed. For example, if you were trying to transfer your memories from a twenty-minute time span, you wouldn’t need to go over all of your individual thoughts and emotions during that time—unlike how you would need to go through those details if it was just a single moment you were trying to transfer.
So with Erani transferring over the memories of our entire mission, even though they were of a decently lengthy period of time, it still didn’t take too long to do. Only a few minutes before Ainash had received everything. And then Ainash went over to me and pushed the memories into my mind.
The sensation of receiving memories was like nothing else. And the sensation of receiving the memory of someone receiving another memory was somehow even stranger. When I got them, I effectively had them implanted into my mind, but I didn’t actually ‘see’ the memories until I made the conscious effort to do so. Until then, they were sort of like a wrapped package in my peripheral vision. Still certainly there, but I’d need to go over and unwrap them to actually know what was inside.
It felt sort of nosey to go looking through the memories of my two companions, especially since these hadn’t been selected as memories they felt comfortable showing me, and more just because it was necessary for me to hold onto them until I gave them back, so I decided to simply not look. We hadn’t technically set down any sort of ground rules regarding that sort of thing, so as far as I was concerned, I’d have rather stayed on the cautious side and not invaded anyone’s privacy.
I took a step back once Ainash was finished. “Okay, Erani, you ready to head back to town?”
“What are we even gonna do? Wouldn’t it be better to just stick around outside the walls? It’d be safer, that way we’re far away in case anyone ends up finding out we stole those documents.”
“At this point, safety isn’t a concern, remember? We’ve done the important stuff, and we have the memories transferred and ready. So even if we all die horribly, we won’t lose much. So then, why not go and do some insanely risky shit we would never otherwise do?”
“Is there anything we need to do?”
“Not particularly. But maybe we could just go and see what happens? Who knows, maybe we find some cool stuff.”
Erani frowned. “What do you have in mind?”
**********
Artil was sitting at his favorite restaurant, Nornin the Great’s, eating his favorite meal, the fried Phin with a side of boiled Korkish eggs. It was a truly delectable delight, and he savored each and every forkfull that he placed into his mouth. A small portion of the Phin, he swirled around on his tongue, trying to get every piece of the meat and breading to touch every part of his mouth to extract as much flavor as he could. Then he chewed—just once—to draw the juices out, and savored them for a moment. It was eventually time for another chew, and, Mmm, the seasoning on this piece was just immaculate.
After a few minutes, he allowed himself to swallow, nodding at the satiation that came from the perfectly-prepared food. Next up was the Korkish eggs. Hmm, he thought, which one looks the best? He would not, of course, start with the best of the eggs, but rather start with the second best, move on to the third best, and so on, until at the very end he would allow himself the delight of eating the best piece of egg and meat. Truly a wonderful experience.
Artil did this every weekend, going to his favorite and second favorite restaurants—of course, going to his second favorite first—and spending the whole afternoon savoring the best meals from each of their respective menus. He was aware that the servers could sometimes get irritable at his pickiness when it came to how the food was cooked, sending it back over and over until he got it at the perfect point of preparedness, and they certainly didn’t enjoy the fact that he took up one of their limited tables during their busiest days for almost all of their open hours each weekend. But ordering the most expensive meal on the menu every week certainly got him on good terms with the owners, so the employees weren’t allowed to kick him out.
He had been in this routine for decades, now, going every single weekend and tasting the delights each time as though it were his first. The number of times he had missed his meals could be counted on a single hand. As such, he had gotten to the point where he knew every face that entered these buildings’ doors—especially Nornin the Great’s. When a new employee was hired, he could tell instantly, if not from seeing them walking the floors, simply by seeing the minute difference in quality of how well the tables had been wiped down, or by seeing that the seasoning on his food was slightly less even than it normally was.
And, of course, he also knew when there were new customers. He knew the regulars, like himself—though he was the only one who had come as often, and for as long—but he also knew the couples who came every year on their anniversary, or the families who came every few months for a special occasion, or those who came for their birthdays occasionally, celebrating with their friends. He knew every face.
So he instantly noticed, during hour four of his meal, when a pair of individuals walked into the building that Artil had never seen before.
He had not seen them in Nornin’s, nor even in the streets. And he knew for a fact that he’d have remembered these people, with their strange appearances.
One of them seemed like he fit the descriptions of half a dozen of the ‘evil knight’ characters out of the bard’s tales he’d heard, with his spiked black armor that seemed to suck the light out of the room the moment he entered.
And the person next to him—or, could she really be called a person?—looked as though he may have seen a thing that looked like her in a monster encyclopedia, wisps of illusory mist wafting from her skin and from the fingertips of her single arm, making her almost unseen in the darkness created by the man’s armor. The two of them drew countless glances from the many dinner-goers in the restaurant when they entered.
Though, it wasn’t as though Artil had never seen people like this before. Adventurers—probably new arrivals in town—who had just completed a big dangerous job and felt like coming to splurge their money on living the high life for a week, before quickly spending themselves back into poverty before the moon could change its phase. They had come here to pretend to live the life Artil lived every day of his life, certainly a fine reward for risking their lives for the sake of the populace.
Still, Artil sometimes wondered if they couldn’t just go and celebrate somewhere else. Somewhere less…seen. He didn’t have a problem with adventurers, but couldn’t they go and take their dirty, blood-splattered clothes, their dullard minds that could think of nothing but battle, their unrefined voices that had no idea how to ask for things without violence, elsewhere? Go celebrate in a lowlife tavern, or out in the woods with the rest of those muscle-brains.
Artil shook his head, trying to rid himself of such distracting thoughts so he could get back to enjoying his meal. As long as that adventurer pair wasn’t too loud, perhaps this weekend’s dinner could still be salvaged. Yes, yes, maybe he could try something different for today, to get his mind off of things. Perhaps, in his next bite, he could mix the Phin and Korkish together, eating them both in a single bite! He tittered to himself at the thought. Mixing foods, such an unrefined concept. But maybe he could do such a thing, as though to go and live the life those lowly adventurers surely lived on each of their days, in the same way they were coming to live his life. Yes, it was so foolish, perhaps it could make this day more pleasurable. To not ignore the adventurers, but to incorporate them into his evening.
He poked his fork into the Phin, picking up a miniscule amount, and then aimed its prongs toward a Korkish egg, bringing it down to scrape off some of the slimy green outer layer. Trembling, he held the concoction up so it was level with his eyes. What a concept, he thought to himself, to mix the two. This will surely be a horrid idea, but perhaps it will be interesting, just to see what it is like.
Slowly, he brought it up to his lips, opened his mouth, stuck out his tongue, closed his eyes in preparation for the new sensation, and…
“Hey everyone!” a voice shouted out.
“Oh!” Artil jumped, startled out of his food-induced trance, dropping his fork to the ground—the half-bite of food along with it. He glanced around, searching for the source of the sound.
“Just wanted to let you all know, you should probably go ahead and sit on the floor,” the voice continued.
Artil looked in its direction, seeing that it was…that adventurer pair! The armored man had gotten up onto a poor couple’s table—Lin and Ana’s, the two that came every three months and change, ordering the Alabaster Squid and the…was it the hyggleberry salad for Ana, normally? They’d recently bought out a local Cleric’s center, he believed, turned the place into one that was actually profitable. The poor things had their dinner totally ruined by this raucous fellow! He stood right there over them, on top of their plates, having kicked their drinks aside as though Nin and Ana weren’t twenty times as important as he.
The patrons of the restaurant stared at the man, not sure what to do. Artil was the same.
“Hey!” the armored adventurer shouted again, louder this time. Any conversation that was still going on in the restaurant stopped. “I’m telling you all right now, get on the fucking ground!”
A couple people shakily got out of their seats and got down to the floor. The employees had clearly made the decision to stay out of this, all fleeing to the kitchen—presumably to call for some law enforcement. But in the time before they arrived, the patrons of this establishment were left to fend for themselves in this strange situation.
The adventurer hopped down from the table, walking around and up to each person who hadn’t yet sat down on the floor.
“Get down, man,” he said to one in his crude accent. “It’s for your own good. I’m doing you a favor, really.”
“D-don’t tell me what to do,” the well-dressed man responded. “Why should I even—”
The armored man grabbed his arm and yanked him out of his seat, taking clear advantage of the Stats of a Classer to exploit the citizen’s weakness. He tumbled to the floor, no harm being done to him, but the implication left plain and bare.
Mutterings filled the restaurant as the armored man worked his way through the room, throwing people to the ground or—as it became clear what he could do—simply looking at people until they got down on their own.
But one man stayed sitting straight up.
The armored man walked up to Artil. “Get down.”
“I will not!” Artil proclaimed. “You think that just because you’re stronger than us, you can order us around?! I will have you know, I am a very important man. And to lord your strength over us like you are some sort of king, it is nothing but a charade! You will come crashing down, you hear me?!”
The man nodded, and suddenly, from behind him, Artil found a hand grabbing his head and pulling him back off of his chair, to the ground. It was that monster woman! She’d somehow snuck over behind him in the darkness created by the man’s armor, and grabbed him from there!
Artil attempted to fight the overwhelming force, but it was clear that this woman, too, had a set of truly devastating Stats. He could do nothing to stop it.
“W-what happens when you try this, and one of your kind is dining among us?” Artil demanded. “What happens when you get unlucky?! You cannot expect to get away with this forever, you know?”
“Okay,” the man called out to the room, ignoring Artil. “Now that everyone’s down, I’m just gonna make sure you all know that you need to stay down.”
In an instant, a calamitous force crushed down on Artil’s entire body. It was as though the world itself were pulling him closer to its center, while at the same time the muscles in his body had shrunk to half their size. He’d been originally trying to at least keep himself propped up on his hands, but the moment the force hit him, he was instantly forced flat on the ground, completely unable to pull himself back up from lying on his back. And judging by the chorus of shouts and surprised yelps coming from the room, everyone else seemed to find themselves in a similar predicament.
“Alright,” the man said, “see? Now you’re glad I got you all on the ground before I did that. No injuries this way. And that’s how I wanna keep it. Just listen to me, and we keep everything clean and bloodless. Really, there shouldn’t be any problems at all. Here, I’ll let it up now.”
The man waved his hand, and suddenly the force was gone, as though it had never been there in the first place. Artil could move freely again. He could get to his feet and attack those people, if he really wanted.
But a part of him reluctantly recognized that the man was right in what he’d said. If Artil had bad footing when the ability had gone off, he could’ve easily tripped and fallen, hit his head on a table…He’d technically been done a favor by being told to get on the floor first. Of course, the man himself had been the one to use the ability in the first place, but Artil certainly didn’t want to give him a reason to do it again in an unsafe scenario.
“So, yeah, anyway,” the man continued casually, “this is a robbery, I guess.”
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