Chapter 3 – Lillia is gross

[The Hunting Lodge – Level 1 – Incomplete: Please collect your rewards!]

Lillia stared at the message until the glowing text burned itself into her eyes.

She was covered in guts. She had tried to clean herself with stale alcohol, which had only made her smell like a drunk corpse. There was nothing in here that was even close to a reward.

She wanted out.

She wanted a bed.

She wanted food that had not been adjacent to bug.

The princess hammered on the door again.

It was the kind of knocking that would have summoned a servant down the hallway at a sprint.

Nothing answered.

She was alone in here.

Even if she got out of the room, what were the chances the door across the stair-landing had a bed? Let alone sheets with a thread count civilized people could discuss without shame? Should she even have been thinking of sleeping in a place like this?

It wasn’t about being tired.

It was about wanting this day to be over.

[Please collect your rewards!]

“What rewards? Come on,” Lillia said as she stopped staring and started pacing.

Back. Forth. Back. Forth.

What did they want her to take?

If the reward was alcohol, she wasn’t interested. She barely liked wine, and she’d been served the best wines from the western coast for her entire life. Ale from a rotting barrel was not a reward. It was a threat.

Maybe it meant the knives? No. Rusty, dirty, and apparently beneath the sacred dignity of Princess as a class. The sword was at least clean.

Back. Forth. Back. Kick the table. Regret kicking the table in soft shoes.

Lillia flopped down onto one of the chairs once she’d stopped saying some very unprincesslike things. At first she sat there with her arms crossed, glaring at the door and the faded text on it. As the seconds dripped into a minute, she let her head fall back over the chair.

There was only one source of for the possible rewards.

Lillia looked toward the ale room.

“No. No, no. No way.”

[Please collect your rewards!]

“If that is the reward, I don’t want it.”

[Please collect your rewards!]

“I waive my reward.”

[Please collect your rewards!]

Lillia bit her lip and kicked her legs before shooting up from her chair. Even if the door wasn’t forcing her to take the rewards, she knew deep in her annoying head that it was a good idea. She hadn’t been taught much about the dungeons during her years of tutoring, but she understood rewards were the reason people fought monsters in the first place. Nobody would choose to do this if they weren’t getting paid.

She had never cared about those lessons. Adventuring had been a world away. She was a princess; there had been an assumed path for her. Court. Kingdom. Marriage, probably.

Swinging a sword at a monster had never even been close enough to reject. That was the kind of thing princelings from far kingdoms dreamed of.

Now that Lillia had the chance to be a brave warrior, she didn’t know what the hell all those boys had been looking forward to.

“Fine…fine,” she hissed as she made her way back to the dark ale room. She’d closed the door most of the way on the way out, and now that she pushed it back open she was staring down the scattered chitin and globs of green guts she’d left scattered around. The mandibles were still in the corner Lillia had kicked them to in the first minutes after her ‘victory.’

“Well?” she asked as she looked back to the door. If this was her reward, what was she supposed to do with it? She certainly wasn’t about to touch it, and even if she did, none of it looked useful. It was just pieces of a giant bug, hacked apart by panic and terrible aim. What a reward.

Lillia stared at the door for a moment as if it was going to respond, then shook her head and sighed. She had spent six years alone in her tower after her aunt stole the crown. She should have been better at loneliness by now.

Personifying the floating text this early was worrying.

“Oh, the stone. On the holy altar and upon the gift of grain,” Lillia said as she crouched down close to the guts on the floor. The stench of sour alcohol hung in the air, doubly strong where she’d tried to clean herself off, but she smelled the sickening sweet of whatever had been inside the bug once she was practically on her knees. The room smelled worse now that the panic had passed. Less like danger. More like consequences.

She didn’t have to touch it. Did she? Lillia drew Vianaffir and prodded at the guts; they squelched, but nothing happened.

By every god from every church. Fine.

Lillia squeezed her eyes shut and reached out toward the thing. It suddenly felt too far away. She had to lean forward and—her pinky pressed against the cold chitin on the floor. Lillia whimpered.

Light! Sound! Fanfare!

Lillia jumped, slipped, and fell forward into the remains of the bug.

Something wet touched her lip.

Something worse got in her mouth.

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

Lillia was busy retching when the white text tried to interrupt the trauma.

[Chitterpede Larva – Confirmed Slain]

[The Hunting Lodge – Level 1 – Cleared!]

[Reward! Chitterpede Chitin x 1. Meagre Rations x 2.]

[You can learn a skill for Class: Princess.]

Once the princess had spit out everything she thought she could taste and scurried over to the back corner to pretend she didn’t exist, she stared at the text and then past it.

The guts of the chitterpede were gone. The chitin, too.

According to the text, she had received at least one of those things.

Ew.

There was also something about learning a skill. Most people never learned skills. Most people also had the good sense not to kill monsters.

More importantly, there was food.

Lillia peeled herself off the floor and ran her fingers through the text again, which was still useless. She’d been told that she had a skill to choose, but hadn’t been told how she was supposed to do any of that. There was a reason that adventurers never went on their first quest alone, but here she was.

Well, apparently she was supposed to have a knight with her, like any good princess. But he was a skeleton out on the…landing.

Lillia ran across the room, over the fur rugs and to the metal door that had locked her in here. There was a shining metal handle on it now. She unbolted the door and threw it open, stumbling out onto the landing and almost catching herself on the knight.

“Sorry.”

The air felt fresh out here even though she was still underground. She could have kissed the floor if it weren’t covered in a thick coating of dust. She was out! Escaped. Victorious.

Victory felt good. Lillia felt hungry and tired.

The text was still in front of Lillia wherever she looked.