by Brian Simons
This took Sal’s giant completely off guard, and the two tumbled to the ground, gripped in a frenzied wrestling match. Sal ran down the slope of the hill and lifted Sybil from the ground. Daniel helped Coral to her feet. Together, they spotted an opening in the bottom of the hill they had been on and they ambled toward it, hoping not to find another giant inside.
The ground continued to shake from the struggling giants they left behind. They crawled through the large opening of the hill and found it empty and dark. They didn’t rest until they were completely hidden from view.
Daniel checked a notification that had popped up on his screen.
>> Congratulations! You have unlocked the Persuasion skill. The higher your Diplomacy, the more convincing you will be when trying to Persuade others to do as you say. +2% to Diplomacy when using Persuasion.
Never in his time playing Travail — or any other game — had he ever been so thankful for a high Diplomacy score. Giants were simple minded humanoids, so Persuading them to leave him alone would be far easier than Persuading other sentient beings. Even so, this was a tremendously useful skill, and one which just saved all of their lives.
As Sal tended to Sybil, Daniel heard her murmur something. Whatever it was, it meant she was conscious again. Coral had tears streaming down her face from pain but she pushed herself into a sitting position anyway. “First,” she said, “we take down Otto.” She paused to take a heavy breath. “Then we destroy that awful FighterFluid.”
Their bout with the hill giants had depleted everyone of HP. Daniel helped pour a greater health potion into Sybil’s mouth slowly. She was barely conscious, but the potion helped remove her “concussion” debuff more quickly. Coral drank the other greater health potion. It helped regrow her broken bone at a faster rate and reduce the number of hours she had to sit in pain while her HP gradually replenished. Sal had sustained heavy damage too, but the team was out of potions. He ate the rest of Daniel’s bread and waited as his HP filled back up.
>> Januar has descended from the sky near Havenstock. Visit him now for blessings and holy tidings! Appearance duration: 5 minutes. Countdown to Januar’s renewal: 3 days.
We could all use a little renewal, Daniel thought to himself.
This was a hell of a time to consider splitting up. It had taken all four of them to fend off just two hill giants. But from here, Daniel and Sybil needed to head north to The Ersatz, while Sal and Coral headed south. They’d have to take the risk of going in twos if they wanted to get strong enough to stand up to Otto. Time was running out before Otto killed everyone in sight and leveled up to the point of being virtually invincible.
The sun had set a while ago over the hills. Daniel, Coral, Sybil, and Sal signed off for the night.
31
Coral held her visor in trembling hands. Was she crazy to log back in? The day before had been unreal. The feeling of falling five stories had been so lifelike. The rush of air against her skin, her heart in her throat, feeling like breathing didn’t bring any air into her lungs. And then she hit ground, and she realized that she did have air in her lungs because it all came rushing back out of her at once. Every inch of her skin was in pain, even the parts that hadn’t made contact with the ground. She thought her organs had been liquefied. But she had to crawl away anyway, dragging a broken leg behind her, after narrowly escaping death by squeezing.
And she was going back for more?
So far, she hadn’t earned a single dollar in Travail. Unless you count the money she gave Sybil to pay for potions and arrows. Maybe if she saw this through, she’d get the Regent’s reward and it would all even out. Or maybe it was a gigantic waste of time.
But then Coral remembered all the other people that logged in. They did it because they found a way to make Travail work for them. This was their livelihood. And it could be hers too if Otto weren’t snuffing players out one by one.
Coral logged back in, determined to see this thing through. Soon, all four of them were together again.
Everyone had been so optimistic yesterday morning. Daniel had set out a plan and they gazed across a hundred hilltops standing in the lush grass and fresh air. But logging in today, in a dark hole under the hill they almost died beside was sobering. They had a job to do, even if it was painful and risky.
“Good luck, you two,” Coral said to Daniel and Sybil. They nodded in response as Coral and Sal exited the hill and headed south.
Thankfully, they could see the hill giants from a mile away, and they avoided getting too close to any. They walked for miles and left the hills behind as the terrain smoothed out to prairie grasslands. The morning-long trek was happily uneventful with no mobs in sight. Then, in the distance, Coral saw tents.
Some were small animal hide tents built in clusters. Others were larger and seemed to be made of separate pieces of canvas stitched loosely together, or sometimes just flopped on top of each other over some kind of frame. The tents all looked filthy, especially where the canvas met the ground.
As they approached, Coral saw two green people hunched over the ground puzzling over a sheet of canvas with a few long branches near them. They must be building a new tent, right at the outskirts of the ogre civilization. There were no walls to contain their kingdom. It just kept growing outward.
No walls also meant no guards, so Coral and Sal walked right up to the edge of the tents and found a narrow path that led them into the tent city.
It wasn’t long before Coral noticed the smell. It was like driving behind a garbage truck on a hot summer day, if that garbage truck was full of wet dogs and armpits.
“Sal,” she asked, “why does it smell so bad here?”
“That’s a matter of perspective. Ogres don’t often wash. We believe that the stronger your scent the stronger and healthier you are. Even if that scent is really, really awful.”
This part of town must have some very healthy people then. She tried to breathe through her mouth to avoid smelling the combined body odors of all of ogredom, but quickly switched back to her nose. It tasted worse than it smelled.
Coral started to see some tents that were much larger than the others, with crowds of people coming and going. Possibly restaurants or marketplaces, but none of the tents were marked except by age and filth. She wondered how anyone knew where they were going around here. A few steps later something hit her in the chest with a wet thud.
She looked down. “Sal,” she said, “what did I just get hit with?”
“Hm, I’m not sure.” He leaned in close to inspect. “It could be mud. Let’s call it mud.”
“Why would someone throw ‘mud’ at me?”
“You lack a certain… greenness. Ogres are wary of outsiders, and a few are actually hostile. So they throw things. Let’s be happy it wasn’t a large rock or a cat.”
Coral looked around cautiously, hoping to see any other projectiles being aimed at her. Occasionally she could see inside the tents they walked past. Some ogres stared out at her menacingly, their long yellowed tusks framing snarling mouths. Others failed to notice her and went about their business. They all seemed to have one thing in common.
“Sal,” Coral asked again, starting to feel like a child on a field trip, “are they all naked?”
“You’ll see a lot of skimpy loincloths, so no, not naked. But you’ll also see a lot of lumpy green skin, male and female. Ogres keep sheep for food and wool, but we aren’t good at delicate things like sewing. You should be glad you’re not an ogre!”
She was glad. The idea of logging into Travail as a coarse, rotund, green person was not appealing.
“Did you choose to start as an ogre?” Coral asked. She didn’t remember having an option to pick a race for herself.
“I guess so,” Sal said. “The old lady told me about life as an ogre right off the bat. How everyone lived on top of each other in one big community with lots of festivals. It sounded like the exact opposite of what my life was becoming, so I said yes. And it has been fun, so I don’t regret it.”
&
nbsp; “What do players do for a living when they start as ogres?”
“A lot of us cook. Even I dabble with that. Ogres mix ingredients indiscriminately. Sometimes that results in new foods that replenish HP, add buffs, or all sorts of other things. Some ogres hunt and loot dungeons, like me. Others specialize in ogre magic. There are a lot of options, just like with humans.”
They had walked into an open rectangular field with tents all around it. In front of them was the largest tent Coral had seen yet. It looked sturdier than most, and rose two stories tall even though it was still only one level. The canvas door panels were pulled back and tied to poles. Sal was headed right into the tent, and Coral followed.
Inside were hundreds of bulbous green people, most of them without a shred of clothing beyond tattered cloths wound around their waists and between their legs. Even the small children there seemed to have large bellies that protruded over their loin cloths. The smell here was almost unbearable for Coral, but no one else seemed to mind. Even Sal seemed used to it, even though Coral was pretty sure he wasn’t an ogre IRL and had the same olfactory sensitivities a human should.
“This is the event hall,” Sal explained. “There’s always something to do here, and if you do well, you could earn XP, items, or other prizes. It’ll be a productive way to spend time while Sybil and Daniel are doing their thing.”
Coral nodded. Productive for Sal, sure. But they would never let her participate. She stayed as close to Sal as she could for protection against the hard looks the crowd of ogres was giving her.
“There’s a cook-off today!” Sal said, staring at a sign near the tent’s entrance.
“That sounds like fun,” Coral said. “Are you going to compete? What will you make?”
Sal rummaged around in his bag. “I have king rana frog legs. And I have juvensprig. That’s it.”
“Sal,” Coral said, “don’t poison everyone here with the juvensprig. Last time you ate that you couldn’t keep it down.”
“Maybe I just ate too much of it,” he said, staring at a handful juvensprig. “It’s just so tasty.”
Sal and Coral left the tent. The air outside hung less heavily with the scent of unwashed ogre. It was a small mercy.
A handful of ogres were setting up cooking stations in the open field. Each station had a large iron pot on a stand over a pile of logs. Sal walked over to claim a pot for himself while Coral walked toward the row of tents that looked out over the field. One of the tents was empty so she went inside.
Coral sat on the grass inside the tent and took her tattered beginner’s clothes out of her bag. They were threadbare in spots, with holes in others. She couldn’t believe she ever wore these. She took out her sewing kit and started patching up the holes just for something to do, even if the XP would be meager at best.
A shadow fell over her. She looked up and saw an ogre standing in the tent’s entrance, her massive frame blocking the light from outside. Coral froze. The ogre stood there staring at her with a furrowed brow and finally pointed a finger at Coral’s handwork. “I want,” the ogre said.
Coral stood up, clutching her worthless rags. She offered the clothing out to the ogre who snatched it out of her hand. She dropped the pants and tried to put on the shirt, but it was too small. “Bigger,” she said. “Please.”
Coral thought for a second. Then she took the shirt from the ogre, picked up the pants, and got to work. She cut one long strip of brown pant leg fabric. Then she cut the beige shirt down the middle. She stitched the brown fabric into the shirt and closed the shirt back up, then took strips of pant fabric to add to the front. She cut the arms off the shirt altogether and enlarged the sleeve openings to accommodate the ogre’s massive arms. She used the last of the pant fabric to add a few inches to the bottom of the shirt to properly cover the ogre’s round stomach.
The ogre stood there and watched. When Coral finished, she helped the ogre put the shirt on. It fit her shoulders nicely, and hid her sagging green breasts. “I Aga,” the ogre said. “Thank you.”
“My name is Coral, and you’re welcome.”
“No more clothes?” Aga asked, pointing to the scraps of fabric on the floor.
“No more,” Coral replied.
Aga took a gold coin out of her loincloth and handed it to Coral. Coral wasn’t sure she wanted that coin to touch her bare skin, but she was afraid of offending Aga. She thanked her for the coin, and then Aga was gone.
Coral sat down on the grass to gather her scraps. Two more ogres showed up at the tent. Each held a bundle of old rags. “Clothes?” one ogre asked. He dropped a pile of rags at Coral’s feet. The rags bore several colors of stains, and they smelled like rancid cold cuts, but Coral took the pile graciously and started to cut and sew. Before long she had put shirts on the backs of two more ogres, each of whom paid her a coin.
One gold coin was nearly worthless. It amounted to a real world dime. But it wasn’t the money Coral was intrigued by. She had aimed to start a business for herself, and here in the Ogrelands that business seemed to have fallen into her lap. She wouldn’t make a living off of this, but at least she was productive. At least she was helping people who wanted her clothes.
More and more ogres piled into the tent with rags, and Coral sent them away with clothing. One woman came in with a torn leather vest that Coral was able to fix. Things were going swimmingly until the crowd backed away in gasps and murmurs.
The tallest ogre that Coral had ever seen ducked her head to fit into the tent. Her black hair was a rat’s nest atop her misshapen skull. Her face was contorted in a menacing shape, and she had three brass rings in her nose. Her shoulders were broad and her breasts hung low. She carried a large sack over her shoulder.
“Coral_Darning make!” she bellowed. She dumped out the contents of her satchel on the floor. Dead Giant Cockroaches. Half a dozen of them. “Make!” she yelled again.
Coral remembered once at the diner when Mr. Wilkerson sent her into the backroom to kill a “giant” cockroach. It was two inches long. These giant cockroaches were three feet long. She could see the segmentation on their antennae. If this ogre had killed these cockroaches herself, she wasn’t somebody Coral wanted to piss off.
Coral guessed that the woman wanted some kind of armor from the insect husks. Coral wasn’t sure exactly how to do that, but she assumed that a human setting up shop in the Ogrelands did as she was told or didn’t make it out in one piece. She could try to run. She could lift the canvas flap of the tent behind her and duck under it, maybe find someplace to hide long enough to teleport out of there. But she didn’t want to vanish and leave Sal behind, especially if people had seen him with her and gave him a hard time after she disappeared. So Coral got to work.
She took her fabric shears and cut the legs off the cockroaches. She wedged the shears between the exoskeleton and the bugs’ insides to pry them away from the hard shells that this ogre woman was most interested in. Coral tried not to think about what her hands were doing as she made a pile of dried cockroach viscera in the corner of the tent. She wasn’t sure whether she was thankful that her Skinweaving skill let her craft with the roaches’ chitinous remains, or whether she hated Galbrag for sending her down this nauseating path.
With six roach husks in front of her, and an ogress watching with rapt attention, Coral took out her sewing needle and thread. She tried to pierce the exoskeletons, but couldn’t. No matter how much she pushed, no matter what angle she tried, she couldn’t get the needle through.
The ogre began to grunt when she saw Coral’s consternation. Coral dug into her sewing kit. She had regular thread. She had some suture thread left from Galbrag, but that would require getting a needle through the cockroach’s hard exterior. The impatient ogre customer took a step forward. Coral kept digging. There must be something in here that would help. Then her hand grazed against something sticky. She pulled her hand out of her kit and saw a spool of spider silk stuck to her hand.
Well, it was worth a try.
She placed three husks side by side and started wrapping them in the sticky thread she had squeezed from an arackid abdomen. She wove a net around the fronts and backs of the husks and then lifted it in front of her. The webbing held the dead bugs together like chain mail. She webbed three more together to form the back of the armor and then dug through her pile of cockroach legs. They still had some bend to them. She used the legs to connect the two sides of the armor like shoulder straps. She gave the armor a good hard look.
>> Raid Vest. Kill mobs dead. Defense +10, Diplomacy -3. Durability: 10/10.
The ogre took it, put it on over her head and beat her chest with both hands, banging on the hard cockroach shells like a drum. She seemed pleased. She gave Coral three gold coins and left.
Coral slouched against the back of the tent, exhausted. She had been working furiously on that piece and was relieved that the large woman wasn’t going to snap her head off. More ogres pushed into the tent. “No more,” Coral said. “I need a break.”
