As soon as Meera appeared, out came her flaming sword. FWOOSH!
“Where is it?!” she cried out, looking around in panic.
“Calm down. We’re outside the dungeon,” I said.
“We quit?”
“Yes,” I said in irritation as I summoned Stig.
As soon as he appeared, he acted like a frog on scorching hot pavement and jumped up on the tallest thing nearby – which just happened to be Meera, since she was standing and I was not.
“AAAH! GET OFF ME, YOU WRETCHED THING!” she shrieked, and tried to scrape him off with her flaming sword.
“Where is it?!” Stig croaked, expertly avoiding her sword as he clambered around her back and wings.
“Get off the angel, Stig,” I ordered. “We left the dungeon.”
He jumped off Meera and thumped softly to the sand beside me. “We quit?”
“Yes,” I said, even more annoyed.
“Phew,” Stig breathed out. “Good call, boss.”
I felt a little mollified by that.
I was about to say ‘thank you’ when he added, “That thing kicked your ASS.”
Which pretty much torched any mollification.
Meera glared at Stig. Her body language communicated that she desperately wanted to go take a shower. “Can we leave now?”
“No, I have to grind this dungeon and make some gold.”
“But that thing was crawling all over me!”
“Deal with it,” I said. “Quietly.”
She shut up, but kept wiping at any exposed skin Stig might have touched.
I summoned Blutus, who immediately dove to the sand, his arms covering his head and his ass sticking up in the air.
“WHERE IS IT?!” he bawled.
“Nowhere, you big baby,” I snarled. “We’re outside the dungeon.”
He spread his fingers and peeked out through them. “You mean we – ”
“QUIT, YES,” I snapped.
“Thank the Abyss,” he murmured, then slowly stood up.
We sat around for the next half hour, waiting. I drank while Meera squabbled with Stig like a teenage girl with her little brother.
I had been expecting to get approached again by another group, but everyone steered clear of us. Oh, there were plenty of foursomes searching for a fifth – some of them in my Level range, even – but I got nothing more than strange looks.
Finally, after it became obvious that something weird was going on, I hailed the next group of Level 15s passing by. “Hey, you guys looking for a fifth?”
“Uh, no, we’re good,” the human Warrior said hastily.
“You’re obviously not,” I said. “You’ve got four people and you’re scanning the crowd for a fifth, so why not me?”
I stood up from the dune, and the entire group stepped back three feet simultaneously.
“Okay,” I said angrily, “what gives? Why’s everybody treating me like a leper? Do I have a booger hanging out of my nose, or what?”
The group looked at each other nervously.
“WHAT!” I yelled. “Tell me!”
A female dwarf shuffled nervously. “There was a group out here earlier who, uh… warned us to avoid you.”
Those motherfucking, passive aggressive ASSHOLES.
“A Revenant Priest, an orcish Warrior, a goblin Hunter, and a Shadow Knight?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
I shook my head in disgust. “Fuckin’ narcs.”
Stig frowned. “What’s a narc?”
“It’s somebody who rats somebody else out.” I turned back to the players. “Okay, look – I can explain – ”
The male elf scrunched up his face. “What, that you like scat porn?”
I froze in complete shock for about three seconds.
Then I exploded.
“WHAT THE FUCK?! THEY TOLD YOU THAT?!”
“About your enthusiasm for ‘Two Girls, One Cup’? Uh, yeah.”
“Mother FUCKERS – ”
“What’s scat porn?” Meera asked innocently.
“NOTHING. Look, guys – ”
“What did the two girls do with the cup?” Meera asked.
“NEVER MIND!” I shouted.
All I needed was for her to decide that she liked that kink, too.
I turned back to the four players. “Look, everything they told you was a LIE.”
“So… you don’t like ‘Lemon Party,’ either?” the dwarf asked.
“NO!”
“Goatse?” the Warrior asked.
“GOD NO! Look, those four dipshits were complete assholes. They ignored me when I told them I was only running the dungeon for the loot – and then when I did exactly what I said I was going to do, they called me retarded.”
“Which isn’t nice,” Blutus interjected solemnly.
I almost expected a rainbow to appear with the words The More You Know…
I soldiered on with my litany of indignities. “They ignored me again when I told them I’d already run the dungeon, they did every stupid goddamn thing you can think of, and then the Priest refused to heal me and tried to leave me for dead – so I used the dungeon layout against them and we griefed them.”
Meera got a bewildered look on her face.
“No, I griefed you!” she whispered loudly.
The four players all looked confused.
“SHH,” I hissed at Meera in a panic.
All I needed was for the others to hear about the blowjob. It was obviously not in the same ballpark (or league, or even the same fuckin’ sport) as ‘Lemon Party’ and Goatse, but I was trying to avoid the whole ‘pervert’ label, and admitting to getting a hummer in public as a form of retribution probably wouldn’t go down so well.
Pun intended.
Thankfully, Meera’s collar glowed and she shut her mouth.
“Look,” I said, “they obviously wanted revenge for me kicking their asses repeatedly, so they’re straight-out lying to everybody. Here’s the deal: I need loot and treasure. That’s it. I’ve run the dungeon successfully and I know how to get past everything. Well… except for the Sphinx, that depends on whether we can figure out the riddles or not.”
“There’s a Sphinx?!” the dwarfette asked happily.
Stig, Meera, and Blutus all nodded slowly in unison, their eyes wide and faces somber.
“…I take it that’s not a good thing?” the dwarf asked again, her smile fading.
“With five of us it’ll be fine,” I said. “Look, if you want to run the dungeon fast, I can take you the shortest way there. If you want the scenic route, I can do that, too. But I need every single copper and sand worm gland I can loot. That’s my one requirement.”
“…sand worm… glands?” the Warrior asked, his face twisting in disgust.
“You’ll see,” I reassured him. “And I’ll show you exactly how to get past them. So – what do you say?”
The four looked around at each other hesitantly.
One by one, they nodded.
“Alright,” the human Warrior said, “but I swear to God, if you start talking about ‘Two Girls One Cup’ – ”
“DUDE, I don’t even like that shit!” I hissed, then added at the last second, “Literally!”
They all stared at me – and then got the joke and laughed.
“Alright… let’s do it,” the female dwarf said.
They decided they wanted the scenic route, so we visited every single room. All four members of the group turned out to be super chill, and they all joined in on the looting.
Even though every dead monster would yield loot to every single player who took the time to search them, most players disdained it because it was boring work for little reward. Plus, most people just wanted to go fight the next mini-boss.
But these guys all joked and laughed while we looted together. It was like we were all picking blueberries down on the farm or some other Norman Rockwell shit.
We were all Level 15s, so the monsters were harder to kill – but since I knew
what was coming and how to kill them, it all went smoothly.
I hesitated when we got to the 250 Ghoul graves. I thought about trying to rip off the treasure for my own, but my conscience got the better of me. The group had been nothing but cool, so I decided to be honest and clue them in. I flew across the graves with Meera, then came back and laid out the treasure on the sand. They were so appreciative that they let me have two of the items for my troubles.
By the way, I switched out my Scepter of the Servant for the Wand of the Dead, and damn if it didn’t make a nice change not having a big, heavy staff strapped to my back. Not to mention the extra boost in power.
Interestingly enough, the Sphinx gave us the same riddle that had befuddled me before:
“Whoever makes it, tells it not.
“Whoever takes it, knows it not.
“Whoever knows it, wants it not.
But the dwarf chick figured out the answer within 20 seconds.
“Oh – counterfeit money!” she yelled gleefully.
Holy shit…
I got them past the worms, I explained the whole pyramid scenario to them, and we killed the last boss without anybody dying once. All in all, a silky smooth run.
At the end, the tiny lizard priest asked us, “Each of you must make a choice as to which reward you wish: treasure or wisdom?”
As a wise gnome once said, Fuck wisdom. Gimme treasure.
This time I got a set of plate armor gauntlets. Couldn’t use them since I was limited to cloth armor, but they would still fetch two gold on the open market.
The dwarf and the Warrior opted for wisdom, but I didn’t ask what the Oracle told them. Didn’t care.
At the end of it all, I shook hands with the group. “Thanks, guys – this went much better than my last run.”
“You’re alright,” the Warrior grinned. “For a guy whole likes ‘Two Girls, One Cup,’ that is.”
“I still don’t understand about the two girls – ” Meera started.
“SHH,” I shushed her, then shot the Warrior a look.
“Sorry,” he said with a giant grin. “Mind if we put you on our Friends list?”
“Yeah, absolutely. I’ll do the same. Say… can I ask you guys a favor?”
“If it involves opening up a suspicious JPEG, then no,” the female dwarf joked.
“NO it does NOT,” I said, then explained what I wanted.
They all laughed and agreed – and that was how I spent the next half hour escorted by character witnesses, going around to every damn person lingering outside the dungeon, explaining how I did not like scat porn or lemon parties and that any claims to the contrary were damn lies even worse than statistics.
There were quite a few players who had arrived after the assassination attempt on my character, and they were mightily confused. But as soon as they heard what had happened, they all laughed their asses off.
My attempts to clear my good name had an unexpected side benefit: once people heard I had run the dungeon twice and had the angelic key to getting nigh unobtainable treasure, they began clamoring for my services as a guide. I begged off until one group offered to let me keep every single sellable weapon and piece of armor, since all they wanted was the XP. That was an offer I couldn’t refuse.
I said goodbye to my four new pals and entered the dungeon again.
It was a pattern I repeated four more times that day: grind, come out with character witnesses, repeat. The dungeon itself got pretty damn boring by the fourth time through, but I was banking mad loot.
Not to mention I leveled up! Level 16 came with a passive ability – meaning that I didn’t have to trigger it, it was just automatically there. It was called ‘Supercharged Heal,’ and it made Self-Sacrifice 25% more effective. Not exactly exciting, but it did make it easier to keep my demons and Meera alive.
On the sixth time through the dungeon, my curiosity got the better of me. When the lizard priest asked me whether I wanted wisdom or treasure, I finally chose wisdom.
Everybody else snorted.
“Really?” the troll Mage of the group said.
“You roll through here six times,” I answered, “you might just choose the wisdom too, out of boredom.”
“You want wisdom?” the goblin Priest asked. “Here’s some wisdom: never eat yellow snow.”
“If you go to prison, don’t pick up the soap,” the orc Monk chimed in.
“Don’t order fish at restaurants on Mondays,” the female blood elf Paladin said.
The entire group stared at her.
“Because it’s left over from the weekend,” she explained.
“Oh… that’s actually pretty good,” the orc Monk mused. “Where’d you get that?”
“An old food critic named Anthony Bourdain.”
“Huh…”
“You and you alone may enter the Temple of Tharos,” the lizard priest said to me. “Take the Light of Knowledge and go and see the Oracle, and she shall bestow upon you her wisdom of the ages. But tell no one what you see or hear within.”
“Stay here,” I ordered Meera, Stig, and Blutus as I walked towards the temple.
“If you find out the Meaning of Life, tell us,” the troll Mage called out after me.
“That’s easy. It’s a life with meaning,” the blood elf said.
“That’s pretty good, too – where’d you get that?”
“Instagram, bitches,” the woman said, then added hesitantly, “…I think. It was either that or a Lifetime movie.”
I tuned out their chatter as I entered the temple, grabbed the torch on the wall, and took in my surroundings. The decorations were straight out of the Well of Souls in Raiders of the Lost Ark: Egyptian hieroglyphs carved into dusty sandstone walls, Anubis-looking statues towering overhead, with my torch casting flickering shadows over everything. At least there weren’t any snakes.
At the end of the room was a cobweb-strewn doorway, and beyond that, a darkened hall.
I told myself that every other person who had chosen Wisdom had come back out unscathed, so I started down the hall. Though I still kept Soul Suck on speed dial, you might say.
As I continued through the darkness, my torch flame grew smaller and smaller, then finally died out completely.
I guess the Light of Knowledge only takes you so far.
Ooooh. Symbolic.
As I crept forward in the dark, my eyes gradually registered a few flickering candles at the end of the hallway. They were arranged on a series of stone shelves, and on one of the shelves was a clear glass bottle.
Where the hell is the Oracle? I wondered.
As I stepped in front of the bottle, something small moved inside.
I jerked back in surprise, then heard a tiny whisper from the opening in the glass:
“…you have come seeking wisdom, yes?… then listen well, mortal…”
Holy shit.
The Oracle was inside the bottle, and was apparently no bigger than a grasshopper.
I was suddenly transported back to high school English honors when we read “The Waste Land” by T.S. Eliot. The beginning of the poem starts off with a bunch of Latin and Greek from some ancient text, where the writer says he saw an ancient oracle. Apparently when the god Apollo offered to grant her anything she wanted, she wished for immortality – which was a mistake. She should have asked for eternal youth. Instead, as she grew older, she shriveled and shrank until she became so small she could fit inside a bottle, which is where she lived. Eventually she became little more than a tourist attraction for curious onlookers. And when the people who came to see her asked what she wanted, she replied, “I want to die.”
Creepy.
Apparently the makers of the game had patterned this scene after that quote from “The Waste Land,” because all the details were there: the bottle. The tiny oracle. The whisper of a voice, ancient and frail.
I leaned in close. Through the mouth of the bottle I saw a tiny humanoid shape no bigger than my pinky. It looked like a frail old fema
le elf with a face more wrinkled than a walnut shell. She was dressed in a robe small enough for a doll’s doll, and she sat on a piece of moss. Next to her, a twig looked big as a log.
“…heed my words…” the Oracle whispered in a voice that sounded as exhausted as she was small. “…there is only ‘I like’ and ‘I do not like’… there is only ‘I want’ and ‘I do not want’… if you cannot abide the sunlight, ask the sun if it will stop shining… it may well set at your request… but if it does not accept your entreaties, then either stay and accept its light… or step into the shadow and look back no more…”
I waited.
Nothing more came out of the bottle.
“…that’s it?” I asked, incredulous.
No answer.
I straightened up and grimaced.
I should’ve taken the treasure.
I felt my way back through the dark hall. The torch reignited as soon I entered the temple, and I replaced it on the wall.
“So?” the orc Monk asked me as I exited. “Did you find out the Meaning of Life?”
“Yeah. It’s a ‘life with meaning.’”
They all stared in shock.
“You’ve got to be shitting me,” the blood elf exclaimed.
“Yeah, I am. But seriously, ‘a life with meaning’ is SO much better than whatever the fuck I just heard in there.”
“What was it?”
“You must not reveal the secrets of the Oracle!” the lizard priest insisted.
I ignored him. “‘I like it, I don’t like it, I want it, I don’t want it’ or some shit like that.”
“What the hell does that mean?” the orc asked.
“Fuck if I know. Let me know if you figure it out.”
The lizard priest scowled at me furiously. “You are never to reveal the wisdom of the Oracle to others! It was meant for you and you alone!”
“I could’ve gotten more wisdom out of a fortune cookie,” I snapped. “And I would’ve at least gotten some Orange Chicken to go with it.”
“Your so-called wisdom sounds like my girlfriend and sex,” the troll Mage joked. “Actually, only the ‘I don’t want it’ part.”
“Probably because of the way you do it,” the blood elf teased. “She’s all, ‘I DON’T LIKE IT.’”
Pengantar Psikologi Klinis Page 28
