Two guards carried me by my arms towards Hyde. “This is all a misunderstanding!” I shouted.
Hyde held in her hands a rune that displayed a video recording of me at the slave prison. I felt the blood draining from my face. “That’s doctored footage! The proprietor probably used Photoshop to make that. Or no, actually he used that newfangled AI stuff.”
“Enough!” Hyde’s look of contempt sent chills down my spine. I knew I was caught red-handed; I was toast.
Someone from the crowd said, “He’s cooked.”
“It’s what he deserves for crashing out all the time.”
“You think they’re going to give him prison time?”
“They might make him a slave as punishment.”
That last comment really made me worry.
Hyde was fuming and staring directly at me. Her teeth grinded together. “Of all the stupid things…” she mumbled. She looked around and decided to address the crowd. “This boy known as Yarm has committed a high crime. His offence is theft that has resulted in the loss of a great sum of the king’s money.” Hyde grabbed my head with one hand like a basketball and began painfully crushing it. “Listen well, Yarm, you may be a hero, but you are not above the law.” She let go of me before my skull cracked. “I assume the lot of you are rightfully enraged by this boy’s thievery?”
Everyone looked at one another. No one was particularly pressed.
One person whispered to his friend, “To be honest, I’ve just being going inside people’s houses and taking stuff.”
“Yeah, same. We’re not going to be punished as well, are we?”
Another Earthling boy admitted quietly, “I cracked open some woman’s flowerpot in search of rupees. Will I be arrested?”
A girl said in a hushed voice, “I got the Pocketpicker title, so I’ve been going around pickpocketing random people to progress my new questline. I even managed to steal a man’s underwear as he was wearing it.”
The guild hall was rich with people pleading guilty to petty thefts in hushed tones.
Hyde’s anger only grew to greater heights. “Silence! Perhaps you’ll understand the gravity of his actions this way. He has freed all the slaves that each of you meticulously selected. None of you will receive the slaves you chose. All thanks to this boy.” Hyde pulled me up by my hair.
The tone of the room shifted immediately. Everyone looked at me with hostility. They had presumed at first that I stole from others, but now they realised that technically I stole from them. Their free slaves were now free. I had snatched away something that each of them was eagerly waiting in anticipation for.
“What’s his problem? He’s been making trouble ever since he got here.”
One boy grabbed the sides of his head in anger. “What the hell? I had this gorgeous catgirl waifu picked out!” He threw a piece of half-eaten bread at me. “You prick! Do you have any idea how much I was looking forward to having her?”
An effeminate boy fell to his knees. “So, I’m not going to get my half-bear bear?”
Other people began throwing food at me and raising their grievances. “I’m sorry!” Wait, why was I apologising? I wasn’t sorry at all. A tomato hit me square in the face. “Pwuh.” I spit out some mush that got in my mouth. “I’m sorry, please stop throwing things.” I didn’t mean my apology in the slightest, but my pride was shallower than the puddle of wet food forming beneath my feet.
Hyde drew her sword. “Your punishment for causing substantial financial damage, is death.” She placed her sword at my neck.
“Death?” My mind envisioned my execution and began thinking of every possible method to escape this verdict. “Wait, wait, wait. Hold on! Let me explain!” My heart was beating faster than it ever had before. “I wasn’t committing theft or anything. I was merely demonstrating a flaw in the security of that fine establishment. You see I noticed that there weren’t any guards patrolling the area. And the locks were far too simple. I merely did this as an exercise to show that the proprietor needed to invest in stronger security.”
Hyde’s sharp sword drew a little blood from my neck. “There is no need to waste money on bodyguards in this city. There is no safer place around because everyone knows not to commit crimes in the vicinity of the king. Within a stones throw, there are elite guards, royal knights, ace detectives, top-class investigators and inspectors. No one would be foolish enough to do what you did, not even the slum dwellers.”
I gulped. “In that case I want a lawyer! The finest one you have, please. I plead not guilty!”
“Are those your last words?”
I closed my eyes as she raised her sword. If I was going to be decapitated, I didn’t want to see it.
“She’s not really going to kill him, is she?” said a boy from the angry mob.
“There’s no way she’d kill a human. This is probably a scare tactic,” replied a girl with an unsure wavering in her voice.
The people who were throwing food at me earlier had calmed their fury. They were mad at me but not mad enough to demand my death.
Loftus pushed through the crowd and exclaimed, “Don’t kill him!”
I looked up and realised Hyde had an uncertain scowl. Her grip on her sword was shaking. Just moments ago, I was sure she was ready to kill me. In fact, I would have bet money on it, not just because I like gambling, but because I felt her bloodlust. I followed her eyes and saw that she was looking around at the crowd. I realised that she did not want to go against the general consensus of us Earthlings. If she killed me, that would be a permanent stain on the reputation that she had tried so hard to build. She couldn’t risk being thought of as dangerous or untrustworthy.
Loftus pleaded with Hyde. “If you kill Yarm now, you’ll have nothing. But if you let him live, he can try to right his wrongdoing.”
I was about to do a complete one-eighty on my opinion of Loftus. He was a decent fellow after all.
“What are you suggesting?” Hyde narrowed her eyes at Loftus.
“He stole property, correct? Why not have him pay back what he stole?” Loftus asked.
Hyde pondered it for a moment. And then pondered it again for some more moments. “It’s an interesting proposal.” She shook her head. “No. I can’t accept that for a person who left the main party and refuses to level up.”
“But he has levelled up,” said Selsie. She pointed above my head. “He’s level 13.”
“He is?” asked Hyde.
“I am?” asked I. I covered my mouth when I realised what was going on. Selsie was such a sweetheart. She was covering for me. I didn’t expect her to be the type to lie for the sake off others. I misjudged her.
The other Earthlings began discussions with their friends. “How did he level up so fast?”
“Wasn’t he like level 3 yesterday?”
“Maybe his quests were easy to complete.”
“Wait, hold on a second. Oh, my goodness. Could it be?” Everyone in the hall was covering for me. I didn’t realise we all had such a strong bond as Earthlings. I should’ve known. Blood is thicker than water. The humans of our world are more closely connected to each other than to the humans of this world.
“Alright,” Hyde said irritably. “Are you going to pay back the money instead of paying with your life?” she asked me.
“Erm, that depends. How much will I have to pay back?” It didn’t depend at all. I would accept no matter what the price. However, since the crowd was somewhat preferential to me living, I believed there was room for negotiation.
Hyde flicked her eyes towards the ceiling for a second and then back down to me. “One million gold pieces.”
“Oi, you 100% just made that number up on the spot! Calculate the damages properly.”
“No. And since you mentioned it, the interest is set at 100% APR.”
“Are you kidding me? Not even the worst loan sharks would have an interest rate that high! You can’t expect me to pay that.”
Loftus gave me a thumbs up. “Congrats, Yarm. You’re alive.”
“Don’t give me that crap. Even if I live a thousand years. I can’t work that off.”
Poorly stifled laughter came from the crowd as they watched me in my miserable state. “She put him into generational debt, man.”
“As they say, if you can’t pay the fine, don’t do the crime.”
I spoke to Loftus. “For reference, how much does a banana cost?”
Loftus paused for thought. “You can buy a bunch for 1 GP.”
I sighed. “I suppose that means there’s only one thing left to do. I’m throwing away my dignity.” I suddenly pounced on Hyde and hugged her ankle. “Have mercy, please.”
She yelped in surprise and tried to shake me off. “What are you doing?”
“I can’t pay that. Go easy on me.” Several strikes from the heel of her boot hit me in the chin. “Ow, ow, ow! Cut me some slack, O beautiful and kind royal knight.”
“Release me you worm!”
“Your boots look a little dirty, my lady. Allow this peasant to spit shine them for you.” I spat on her shoes and rubbed them with my shirt. “Does that get me a discount?”
“No! There’s no discount!”
“What do you want me to do? I’ll prostrate myself. I’ll dance like a monkey or bark like a dog for you. Whatever you want if you’ll reduce the debt!”
Hyde pried me away with her hands and threw me across the room into several chairs. “Enough! As long as you fall in line from now on, you can pay the debt back as gradually as you like.”
I groaned as I felt my back in pain from a chair leg poking it. “Sounds good.” I lifted my thumb into the air.
“Remember to follow my orders from now on.” She and the other guards left.
I laid down on the ground and praised the heavens that I was alive. “Everyone, thanks for bailing me out.”
I glanced around at my peers and saw the unhappy looks on their faces.
Thaxted emerged from the crowd. “I’m happy that you’re alive, but we all still want our revenge for having our slaves stolen from us.” He cracked his knuckles. I was dragged by an angry mob to my room. They wrapped me in dozens of blankets and then collectively beat the shit out of me. It wasn’t physically painful but there was a definite mental toll from seeing just how many people wanted to drop kick me.
I was the recipient of a Dempsey Roll, a Kamehameha, a one-inch punch, and various other techniques. In the safety of my blanket armour, I was glad no one used any real Skills on me.
While I was being attacked, someone asked, “Does anyone have to kill kobolds for their Hero quest?”
“I do. Shall we team up?”
“Yeah. I’ll send you a temporary party invite.”
Thaxted groaned. “How lucky are they? After killing my first monster, the next Hero quest told me to go and crack a dragon egg. Where the hell do I find one of those?”
“Oof. So, once you complet— Oof— a quest, you get another one? Oof.” My sentences were constantly interrupted by my assailants’ blows.
“You didn’t know that?” asked Thaxted. “Oh, right. You never killed a monster, so you never found out. I assume you don’t have any other Title questlines?”
“Oof. There are more quests? Oof.”
“Yeah. When you get a Title, the system gives you a questline for it.”
“Cool beans. Oof. I’ll check after I’m freed. Oof.”
Approximately twenty minutes passed before everyone had their fill of beating me up. It was early morning, so they all went back to the process of getting ready for the day. While they did that, I decided to check my System. I opened up the status page and my heart sank. It was blood red.
“Oh no,” I whispered. “I broke it. Is this what they call the red screen of death? I’ll have to call my niece to fix it.” One problem, I couldn’t do that. My niece was in another world. I had already bothered Loftus and the others enough. I’d figure out this problem myself.
I turned the System off and on. That didn’t work. I tried it again. It didn’t work again.
I was all out of ideas. Interestingly, I could still navigate the System. It was red but all the buttons still worked. I gave it another look over.
[Name: Yarm] [Age: 45] [Level: 13]
[HP: 100] [MP: 10] [XP: -5412]
[Body: 0] [Mind: 0] [Soul: 0]
[Titles: Villain, Lockpicker] [Skills: Cleanse]
What was this? No, seriously, what was this? I couldn’t read it because of the text colour. It was difficult to read black text against the red background. I went into the settings and changed the text to white.
I was level 13? What had I done? Was I a sleepwalker that went off killing monsters in the middle of the night? I think there was a movie about something like that.
My eyes drifted to the XP. I was in the red, literally. I did see my XP going down at certain times. It kept popping up repeatedly when I was freeing those slaves. I wondered why that would make me lose XP. Maybe because it was a criminal action? Did the others lose XP when they stole? I made a mental note to ask them about it later.
The most damning change in my status page was this new Villain title. It sounded so ominous. It had replaced my Hero title. I became certain that this Villain thing was the cause of my System’s new colour scheme. If the Hero title gave you a blue system, it only made sense that the Villain title gave you a red system.
I looked at the title suspiciously. If I had to guess why it appeared, maybe it was because my experience was in the negatives? Nah, that couldn’t be it. It probably happened because I ate that salty-ass waffle.
I realised I should probably check what this new title did. It was something scary, I was sure. My mind began racing through hypotheses. Perhaps it required me to feast on the flesh of humans for sustenance. Or maybe it gave me the urge to create a device that blows up the moon. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be good. My trembling finger rose to touch the Villain title.
[Villain: Increases XP loss.]
It was just the opposite of the Hero title? My shoulders relaxed. I guess I should have expected that. All that suspense for nothing.
I heard a knock at my door.
My shoulders tensed again. If someone saw my System like this, they’d definitely be alarmed. More than alarmed, in fact. If Hyde found out I was a villain she would lop off my head the first chance she got. I doubt even my fellow Earthlings would be ok with it. They’d snitch for sure.
“I’m coming in.” That was Thaxted’s voice. I heard the doorknob jiggling.
I scrambled to hide my System. “No! Don’t come in! I’m really busy doing something! Please don’t come in!”
The doorknob stopped moving. Thaxted replied, “My bad, bro. Didn’t realise you were gooning. I’ll come back when you’re done.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. Wait, what the hell was gooning?
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