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Tutorial Rewrite 85
🕑 Added 2023-01-25 10:05:20 +0000 UTCWith trembling hands, I reach for the cake, but before I can gouge out a piece of it, he stops me. “Come on, man, this is your birthday cake. Let’s be at least a little civilised with it, alright?” I don’t know if I can actually speak or if the food coma has made me mute, so I just nod at him dully. He smiles and brings out a small plate each, and a spoon for each of us. Then, finally, he takes out a simple dagger and a tiny candle. By pointing at it with his left thumb, the candle lights up into flames, and he places it atop the cake. I look at the candle. Then I look up at him. He smiles at me. Then, he pulls out a lute from his inventory. I’m not kidding. A lute.
The fact that he has a lute is quickly overshadowed by the fact that he can actually play it, and then that fact is likewise overshadowed when he starts to sing Happy Birthday to me. My jaw slowly drops.
“...Happy birthday, dear Ki-tty, happy birthday to you!” he finishes.
Ah. I’m crying again. That’s weird.
He pushes the cake closer to me. “Come on, blow out the candle. Make a wish!”
I look down at the candle. In my heart, I make a little wish that I would never tell anyone. Silently, I blow out the candle, the words echoing softly through my heart.
I hope Moleman keeps being my friend forever.
He cuts two pieces out of the cake, one for me, topped with the obligatory marzipan rose, and another for himself. I take the spoon in hand and grab a piece of the slice, bringing it to my mouth. It’s sweet. It’s almost too sweet. It wasn’t this sweet back when I ate it alone. Isn’t that weird?
Even though it’s a pretty big cake, we finish it together. Apparently, he doesn’t like marzipan, so he gives it to me, and I eat it happily even though it gives me heart palpitations. While I’m stuffing down the last of the marzipan, he suddenly stands up from the table and turns away, towards the wall. I can see him doing something suspicious, but I’m too focused on the yummy yummy yummy yummy to really care.
As I put the last piece of the cake into my mouth, a certain something slides across the table. I look down. There, a small wrapped package lies.
“It’s a present,” Moleman says. “For your birthday.”
My gaze jumps from him to the little package and back up to him. “Th—thanks,” I choke out through the marzipan and the cake and everything else. I almost put my hands on the present, but then I realise how dirty they are, so I quickly lick them off and wipe off the last on my legs. My hands are still dirty, but I can’t restrain myself any longer. My clawed hands fall on the simple package and I lift it off the table. It’s about the size and weight of a book, sturdy, and wrapped in decorated paper, strung together with a little bow. I try to open it as carefully as my clawed fingers possibly can, first taking off the bow, and then cutting off the paper.
It’s a book. No… a tome. A magic tome.
My eyes widen at it. “Th—this is…?”
“It’s a basic introduction to magic and spellship,” Moleman explains, standing just over my shoulder. “If you read it properly, you should be able to learn the Mana Sensing and the Mana Control skills at the novice level. You’ll need other books for specific spells, but…” He smiles at me warmly. “I can always give you those at the next conference, right?”
My mouth opens and closes a few times. My hands are trembling, and not just from the food and sugar. Gulp. “B-, but, if you give me this, then the next time I beat a floor, it will just…”
“In that case,” Moleman states grandly, “it will also serve to help decrease your debt. If you think about it like that, then it serves a dual purpose, right?”
“But… but it’s your book, can’t I just?...”
I try to hold it out to him, but he just pushes it back to me. “Keep it. You might very well need magic in some of the upcoming floors, and even if you don’t, it can’t help to have a few more skills.” I want to refuse it again, but then his eyes turn hard. “You aren’t trying to deny it just because you don’t like my gift, are you?”
“N—no! Of course not! I love it, it’s the best gift I’ve ever gotten!” I blurt out.
He smiles down at me and pats me on the shoulder. “Glad to hear it! Since you love it so much, there shouldn’t be any trouble keeping it, right?”
…Damn it, he got me! He’s too clever for me…!
I look back at the tome in my hands. It’s thick. Bound in leather. It’s even got one of those fabric bookmarks built into the spine of it. Unable to resist, I crack it open. That wonderful old-book smell hits me head-on and drags me so far back into my childhood, into sitting alone in the library at every recess, reading any and every old book I can get my hands on, that I don’t even bother to check the contents. I know it will be educational. I can trust that Moleman wouldn’t give me something useless. Before I know it, I’ve already put the book into my inventory. It’s the only non-hide thing in there.
I’ve got one attempt to read it. Thirty days should be enough, right? Yeah. It better be, or I’ll probably throw a tantrum or something.
“You can read it now,” Moleman says, startling me out of my reverie. “I’ve got some reading to do on my own, so I don’t mind if you want to check it out now.”
I squint at him. Before I can agree or disagree, he’s already pulled out a book of his own and taken his seat on the opposite side of the table again. He’s basically giving me no choice, but… this book does look mighty readable. Not saying anything, I pull the book back out again. It’s thick. It’s heavy. It smells good. It’s exactly how books should be.
I open it to the first page and start reading.
It is next to incomprehensible. Actually, scratch that, it is incomprehensible. Digit nexus? Arcarteries? Blood vessel awakening? Heart of sage? What does that even mean?
But since reading it is supposed to give me a skill, I keep going.
I’m not sure exactly how long time passes by, but even when the sun goes down and I’m a hundred pages in, I still haven’t got a clue what any of this is. It’s like I’m a kindergartener just about to learn the alphabet and someone dropped a thousand-page literary analysis of the dictionary in my lap. And—and this is supposed to be basic?
I glance up at Moleman. He’s reading a book titled An Advanced Guide to the Practical Utilisation of the Juurit-Porrs Theorem. And he doesn’t even seem slightly perturbed by it. Unwilling to give up, I continue reading, but after a few more minutes, Moleman puts down his hefty tome and looks me in the eye. “So,” he says. “How about we get you smashed?”
“H—huh?” I say. “As in… bodily crushed?”
“No,” he says. “I mean, it’s about time you learned how to party.”
I feel my heart flutter. “Is—is it time?”
He nods at me. “It is time.”
I fly to my feet and he’s already got two bottles in hand. “Hardest liquor you can buy in the shop,” Moleman says. “Ninety-two per cent alcohol content. There is one at ninety-eight, but it’s way too expensive. This one, though?” He grins. “Just right.”
He uncorks them. I have my first taste of the nectar of gods, and after that, I don’t remember much.
At some point I think my Poison Protection rose, but that was probably just a mistake or something. Apparently, we two weren’t the only ones partying. As the night grew darker over the castle, more and more challengers decided that what was needed right now was a good old party to liven the spirits. We didn’t have any strobing lights, or thumping base, or smoke machines, but we did have magic, and a lot of people playing modern pop songs on mediaeval instruments. Moleman was one of them.
People were dancing and throwing their arms around each other and jumping around and mages were shooting bolts of flashy magic into the air and the alcohol flowed like water. Once people got a little more inebriated, they became a lot more generous with their points and their possessions, with people buying fine liquor left and right. Some people got so drunk they dropped, but there was always a mage nearby to give them a detoxification spell so they could drink more.
At one point, I think, I’m pretty sure I tried to impress on someone by disembowelling myself, but they didn’t react too kindly to my trick. I’m not sure if the alcohol or my display made them puke their guts out. Could be either one.
And then, when the party was at its hardest and the trombones and the trumpets and the lutes and the drums were playing the hardest, everything ended.
<The Day of Grand Conference
will end in 00:00>
<The Day of Grand Conference
has ended.>
<Thank you for participating!
You will now be returned to your lobbies.>
