Chapter 33 – Returning to Edelgard

“Huh?”

A man about the age of 25 opened up his eyes. He had fallen down from what seemed to be a gaming chair. He was in a small apartment that only had one room that connected to a tiny bathroom. The whole place looked messy and unkempt.

“What was I doing?”

He stood up, his eyes felt heavy. He felt as if he had been sleeping for days. Dazed and confused he glanced around. The room around him seemed familiar yet distant at the same time.

He looked around, the apartment was badly kept and dirty clothes that were rolled up into a ball were thrown in the corner. A half-eaten microwaved pizza was to the side along with some soda. This drink had long lost its carbonated properties and now would taste like sugar water.

The man rubbed his head as he sat back in his chair. He felt like he was forgetting something, something important. He remembered returning from a hard day’s work while almost getting run over by a truck. Then he started playing some games.

‘I must have fallen asleep while playing…?’

He thought to himself while looking at his PC screen. Instead of seeing a game on it, he saw a pitch-black monitor. He leaned forward to his mouse, maybe his computer had gone into sleeping mode after he dozed off. The moment he jolted his mouse the screen flickered and something appeared, something that didn’t look like a game.

“What the?”

He saw an image of an ant, it looked awfully realistic and somehow more monstrous than a regular insect. The image on the screen looked at him as it moved. He moved his head to the left and the large ant’s head moved to face him. His first thought was that it was some kind of new gaming feature. Things like eye tracking weren’t new, the strange part was that he wasn’t wearing anything for the program to track his head movement. He didn’t even have a webcam on his computer and he wasn’t wearing his VR headset either.

While he was thinking an odd occurrence took place. He saw that the ants head started pushing through the large flat computer screen as if it was trying to tear through it. He instantly jumped back in panic falling down from his chair yet again.

After some pushing, the monster ant’s head finally burst through the 32-inch screen. The thing gave out a massive loud wail that caused all the windows in his apartment to shatter. He moved up his right hand to protect himself but he spotted something wrong, he couldn’t move it at all.

The man looked to where his arm was and saw it mangled up. It looked as if he put it in a garbage disposal, his fingers were all bent out of shape and the pain was unbearable. Before he could register this the monster ant’s head moved closer, its giant mandibles opened up in front of his face and they chomped down on his head.

“Noooooooooooo!”

A youth in a black robe shot forward, his loud scream alerting the people next to him.

“Hey, calm down.”

Roland’s eyes went wide, he wasn’t sure what was happening. His first instinct was to look to his right arm. He remembered activating the barely tested scroll that he made. It was a yet unreliable product that he supersized after making a smaller version. He used the whole pelt from a monster sheep that was used for regular spell scrolls along with some better magic ink.

He created the runic spell by jerry-rigging as many fire arrow runes onto the pelt as possible. He managed to connect them all together with the magical pathways and fixed it all up with his debugging skill. What was created was a haphazard runic spell scroll that overloaded when you tried casting it, the backlash from activating it was the reason his arm almost exploded.

At least that was what he thought had happened but for some reason, his arm looked mostly fine now. His fingers weren’t disfigured or gone and the burn scars were faint. He looked to the side and finally realized that he was in a moving carriage, his party members were sitting there and looking at him.

“Quite th’ girly scream ye git thare laddie.”

Dalrak the dwarf laughed out loud while Orson sniggered on the side. Helci looked at the two men with narrowed eyes and even gave Orson a shove. The young man just sniggered further.

“Hey! Stop making fun of him, he almost died!”

Roland’s face showed lines forming between the eyebrows while he tilted his head to the side. Helci looked to him with a slight smile on her face as she explained what happened after he had used that spell scroll of his.

“After you passed out the Myrmeke Queen…”

Apparently the spell worked and the Queen ant backed away into the mine, due to its size the tunnel collapsed right after the monster retreated. Roland had passed out, Orson carried him to safety over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
The adventurer’s outside were already waiting for them. The two explosions that they caused to blow up the wall alerted them to their presence. Wells the expedition leader was really surprised to see them there all alive with only Roland being injured.

He was then healed by the tier 2 priest that had tagged along on this expedition. The priest had advanced healing miracles which allowed Roland’s fingers to be patched up. The reason that they were in a carriage now was that they were heading back to Edelgard.

“So the expedition leader ordered a retreat after realizing that there was a tier 3 Myrmeke Queen in the mine?”

“In short, yes.”

Helci nodded while relying on the information. This made sense as the tier 2 team would probably have a hard time against a tier 3 monster. To bring down a monster at that level they would probably need a full party of equally strong tier 3 classes. Monsters tended to be stronger than their human counterparts and the gap widened on the higher tiers.

“Well done back thare laddie, couldnae have made it back witoot ye”

Dalrak said while giving Roland a manly smack to the back, this caused the youth to almost face plant into the wooden carriage floor. He was slowly getting fed up with these people smacking his back all the time.

“Yeah great job kid, what was up with that spell anyway?”

Orson asked while everyone stared. Roland had made quite an impression on the adventurers here, some of them were even thinking that he was a tier 2 in disguise.

“Ah, it was just a spell scroll I bought. It’s not like I can cast those myself.”

From the standpoint of these adventurers, this had to mean that Roland was someone rich. There was no way a normal person would have so many common grade spell scrolls on him of various elemental affinities. He had to either have some kind of connections or be the son of a rich merchant, maybe even a noble in disguise. They would of course not pry into his business but it was something they would remember.

Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

“Hey, if you need advice on some of the shops in the flower district, come find me in the guild. I can introduce you to all the best girls, they’ll take care of ya, just say that big brother Orson sent you.”

Roland had a blank look on his face while he was listening to Orson talking about the flower district. This was how the city’s red-light district was called. The warrior was probably thinking that he was giving the youth some sound big brotherly advice. The young boy that was actually a person over thirty wasn’t as appreciative. He could only shake his head while Orson talked about his passion. The dwarf even started butting in, he tried to sell Roland on the dwarf girls yet again. These two were quite the pervy duo apparently and they seemed to be hitting it off together.

“That’s why men are…”