Chapter 20: Blind Butcher
The portal spat the thirty-four survivors out into the centre of Aeros. The starter village was timber and torchlight and the smell of a market that had been running since Day 1, and after the Goblin Ridge ravine, it felt, to most of the survivors, like coming back from Hell, and entering heaven.
To Liam, it was just the next location.
A gold notification settled into the corner of his vision.
[Raid Contribution: 98.4%. Gold Awarded: 125.]
He looked at 125 gold. He did the maths. "Elizabeth," he said, still walking, "our rent is five gold a month one kill just covered two years."
"We’re balling," Elizabeth said, in the flat tone of someone whos dead tired.
Behind them, Berry was limping, her tiger ears low, her greatsword in two pieces on her back because she hadn’t wanted to leave them in the ravine, even if it were broken.
"Liam, Elizabeth about the formation, about Ducky, hell about everything, I want to make it right come to the guild hall, we have wine, and I..."
Elizabeth didn’t even look back. She stiffened, her jaw clenched as she tucked her chin and kept walking, glued to Liam’s side. After being spat on and mocked while petrified, the "Elite" guild’s apology felt like ash. Her hands balled at her sides, trembling; she didn’t care about their hall or wine. She only cared about the man walking next to her, who smelled like a wood smoke deity.
"We’re eating first," Liam said to the market ahead of him, not to Berry.
Berry stopped walking.
They found a stone bench near the fountain, and Liam pulled bread, cured ham, and mustard from his inventory and built sandwiches with the bread first, then meat, then mustard applied in a single pass with the back of a spoon he’d produced from somewhere, two sandwiches done before Elizabeth had finished sitting down.
The Iron Hearth survivors had drifted into the square and were hovering at a radius that was close enough to feel near him and far enough to pretend they weren’t, except for Johan, who had found a ledge nearby and was sitting on it.
"Are we really going back to Tana Forest after this?" Elizabeth asked, taking the sandwich he held out without looking at her. "You’re Level 24 and the rabbits there are Level 4."
"I missed recipes," Liam said. "I need to be thorough and if I got poison resistance off a Level 2 toad, there are things in that forest the Beta players missed because they were too busy staring at their spreadsheets, i just want to eat everything in it."
Elizabeth considered this while chewing. "That’s either the most logical thing you’ve said today or the least."
"Both," Liam said.
He reached over and brushed a crumb off her cheek, which was a practical thing to do because there was a crumb there, and his fingers grazed the base of her cat ear on the way, which was not something he had planned, and Elizabeth made a sound that was not a word and was also not something she had planned, a sharp involuntary gasp that cut off immediately as she slapped his hand away with both of hers and leaned back so fast she nearly left the bench.
" DON’T," she said, both hands still clamped around his wrist, her tail so aggressively vertical it was brushing the underside of the bench. "That’s... those are! don’t you complete idiot."
Liam looked at his hand then looked at her ear. Filed it under noted. "Your ears were twitching and it was distracting you should eat your sandwich."
Elizabeth ate her sandwich, facing slightly away from him, which did not help with the tail situation at all.
In his chest, the Hearth was warm and settled and Hestia’s voice arrived in his head with the crackling warmth of something that had been waiting to say this for a while.
"You’re a cruel one, aren’t you?" Hestia’s voice purred in his mind. She appeared as a shimmering, golden reflection in the dew on the grass, standing alongside him invisibly. "The tiger-woman wants you. The cheetah-girl is obsessed. And the cat-girl behind you is practically vibrating from your touch. You’ve marked her, Liam. You’ve claimed her as part of your pack."
’I’m human, Hestia. What do you mean by ’pack’ and ’marked’? Liam thought back,
’And they don’t like me. They like the food. Or they like my silver hair and red eyes because it makes me look like my family, the ones with the money. People always want me for what I have, not who I am.’
"Oh, you poor, blind butcher," Hestia laughed, the sound like crackling tinder. "You aren’t human anymore. The Hearth has burned that away. You are a Beast-Man now, a predator. Your instincts marked her the moment you called her your partner in front of the others. Learn what you are, Liam. You don’t just cook the world; you dominate it."
Liam looked at Elizabeth, who was aggressively focused on the a wall in the distance and whose tail was still doing the thing. He looked away, "you did well today," he said, in the same tone he used for everything, flat and precise and not up for discussion. "Better than any of those elites keep it up."
Elizabeth looked at the fountain. "Thanks," she said to the wall.
By the time they got back to the townhouse, the moon was high and Liam’s Vulcan Greaves hit the floor and he sat on the edge of the bed and looked at his gold total and said, "We’re going shopping tomorrow i need a real frying pan and your gear is also falling apart."
Elizabeth sat on the other side of the bed and looked at the back of his head, silver hair catching the candlelight, and thought several things she elected not to say.
"Shopping," she said instead, "okay, whatever."
Liam was already asleep by the time she’d finished the sentence, which was statistically typical and also somehow the most annoying thing he’d done all day, which was a high bar given the day.
She looked at the ceiling for a while.
Outside the window, the crowd that had been gathering below the kitchen light since last night had gotten slightly larger, and one of them had brought a chair.
Tomorrow, Liam had said a real frying pan. Her gear and shopping.
She pulled her knees up and stared at the wall.
He needs a shirt, she thought, for the fourteenth time since the appearance sync. This is a problem that is getting worse.
[Tool Tip: Sonic Step (Passive)]
Unlocked at 100 Speed. In a system limited by frame rates, you have reached the ’Break point.’ All movement wind-up animations are deleted. To an observer, Liam does not move through space; he simply exists at his destination. Movement is now instantaneous.