Born a Monster Chapter 363

363 263 – Not About

“Co now, husband.” Madonna said. “You must have at least suspected that I’m not the only one who hates you.”

“You hate all mortal creatures.”

“Not kittens.” she said, bitterly. “Kist is right about those vermin. Their cuteness is a power unto itself. Maybe puppies, I’m not certain about them.”

“Hell hounds are well known.” I said. “Nobody speaks much about hell cats.”

“The population of hell cats never properly recovered after the last tangle with the Fae Courts.” she said. “Or else sothing else. They exist, and none of that belittles you, so we must have gotten off topic sohow. I bla you.”

I shrugged, “So does Gamilla, and for so much.”

“Shall I give you a lecture on every way you’ve ever failed ?”

“Go ahead.” I said.

“What?”

.....

“It’s better than letting it fester in secret.” I said.

“Oh. Well, now I don’t want to give it to you all at once. I want to save at least so parts of this until they hurt. Besides, how do you know she isn’t lying to you?”

“It’s one of the Truthspeaker abilities I picked up, which gives a bonus to all my Sense Motive skill checks.”

“Sense Motive is just a Charisma skill. You’re far better at Valor skills, like lee Attack/Flexible lee Weapons/Flog. Co on, you’re in the mood to work on Wrath and Lust at the sa ti.”

“I still don’t understand how that’s worth Lust points.” I said.

“Because I enjoy it, you idiot. Besides, you haven’t smacked once since Dauria.”

“I don’t... It isn’t right to beat you at a ti when I’m actually angry at soone else.”

I ant , but let her think I ant Gamilla.

She sniffed. “I suppose I could get my beatings sowhere else... Maybe the variety would do good.”

“Ugh.” I said, “WHY is this so important to you?”

“Because Pain Tolerance is like a Fitness skill; it fades if you don’t maintain it.”

“Wait, is it?” I asked. It didn’t seem to be, at least for . Her system must have differed.

Or my System just didn’t track such things; I’d run into that before as well.

There ca a gentle tapping at our door. “Rhishi, is everything okay?”

“Go AWAY, Kist!” Madonna hollered. “I’ve almost convinced him to beat again!”

We’d forgotten to lock the door, and Kist ca right in. “Rhishi! You ought to NEVER beat your wife. No matter how much she deserves it.”

“I offer counterpoint.” Madonna said. “Any wife who uses the words, husband please beat should be beaten.”

“No.” Kist said. “My friends have enough enemies. My friends shouldn’t be hurting my friends.”

“The outrage you feel would be enough reason.” Madonna said. “But add to it the way your whiskers twitch...”

“MY WHISKERS DO NOT TWITCH! Rhishi, tell her.”

“When you quiver with anger, your whiskers vibrate.” I told her. “They only twitch when you do that thing with your nose.”

“WHAT!?”

I sighed. “I literally CANNOT lie to you.”

“Are we still friends?” she asked.

What? How did she get from the one topic to the other?

“We are still friends.” I said.

“Best friends, right?”

“I still think my best friends would hit in the head less.”

Kist shrieked in fury, flinging a disk from the valet nearest the door. It struck my eyelid with a resounding thwack noise, counterpoint to the slamming door.

“And. Ow.” I said.

“Pain,” Madonna said, “is sotis a great motivator. Oh, by the eternal flas, did you lose ANOTHER flog?”

“Yes.” I admitted.

“n!” she huffed, pulling a new flog from her inventory. “Shall I lock the door, husband?”

And what happened after that, and for how long, is none of your business.

That first night, Gamilla, Kist, and Madonna got to eat with Captain Drumbard and mates Spiro and Pickernell at his table. I got to eat with Miranda the Lionheart, Frank Laurant, Devin Buchierre, and Flatface, and other sailors whose nas I cannot properly recall at the current ti.

I actually learned a lot about piracy in general and the piratical mind-set that night, having inadvertently started a discussion about what exactly being a pirate ANT.

“I give up.” Frank said. “Where in your inventory do you KEEP your gold?”

“I am dressed in linen cloth, and not even sturdy well woven linen at that.” I replied. “I travel in the company of pirates without the advantage of being among their crew. What makes you think I have a single copper on , let alone gold?”

“But... but... no, all adventurers are rich.” Frank stamred. “Everyone knows that.”

“Does everyone know you’re smart?” Devin asked.

I sighed as that beca another shouting match. Not that I desired it to stop; I wanted to join in to the degree that it was better that I left while I was behind.

My feet carried toward the bow of the boat, where an elderly man carried out the duties of Sea Witch. “Ah,” he said, “the child of one of the Sea Titans. I had hoped that we would get the chance to speak.”

“I’m not certain I’m in a mood where it is safe to speak to .”

“Heh, I am. Shall I tell you how I know?”

“Please do.”

“The short version is that I’m not the one you’re upset with, and you know it.”

“And the long version?”

“You wouldn’t be nearly half so much fun to hear tales about if you were the type to kill soone just for speaking the truth with you.”

“No, I’m usually on the other end of that.”

“Maybe you should learn to tell other truths?”

“All right. I’m angry, but the root of it isn’t Gamilla.”

“Do you even know your root?”

“My root is curiousity, but if you an the root of my anger...”

I thought about it, made certain.

“When I was born, one of the things I did was observe my older brothers and sisters. When I left the place of my birth, it was fear. A desire to live, not a desire to see new things. Just this week, or last week depending how one reckons ti, I killed a man who was better at my warrior class than I am. If he could die, and so quickly...”

“I still have reason to fear.” I said.

“Oh.” he blinked his eyelids, closing in from each side. “I guess I really don’t want to eat you and take your place, then. Sorry to bother you.”

He flowed over the railing, spawning multiple tails and tentacles, and more eyes than any creature existing only in one dinsion could ever truly need. I would learn later that there was no night shift Sea Witch on duty for the Dainty Dolphin.

[You have been released from ntal compulsion.]

Dang it, System! I wished it were sentient, so I could yell at it.

[To begin trapping spirits and forcing them to interface between you and your System...]

[System Configuration Settings changed. Settings will take effect on next Recompile or Reset.]

Wait. I knew those terms.

In retrospect, I wish I’d stood there, on that bow, and taken the ti to deduce what Recompile and Reset were.

Instead, I found myself walking upright, exposing my teeth to the salt air (I really needed to brush better), and feeling like a blood blister had burst and released whatever bile my biology had been building up in my blood.

Finding myself again possessed of a hunger, I made my way back to the ss deck, and to the adjacent kitchen.

“Are there any leftovers?” I asked.

“Not for long.” the plump woman I found there said. “But you don’t want these scraps. They co at a cost.”

“What cost?”

“You have to help clean all these dishes until they are, each of them, spotless.”

[You have 442/960 biomass.]

“Done.” I said.

.....

“Not so hasty, take a look at this pot.”

I looked at it. Integrated skills used to clean dishes into my Reticule, and looked again.

“Done.” I said.

“No take backs.” she said, handing a pastry.

I earned Gluttony experience (just the one), and Service, and learned that there was a limit to how much my System would let advance a skill just through repeated use.

“Well.” she said when we were done. “Get out of here before I ask the captain to make you my kitchen slave.”

I said polite good-byes, and made my way to my quarters.

Madonna grunted, and shoved out of the bed. “Imbicile.” she muttered, half asleep. “You sll. Go bathe first.”

And that’s why I wasn’t in my quarters when the assassins first ca for .

Yes, those of you from technical realms already know this, and what the difference between the two is, and the secrets of my universe are probably unraveling before your eyes. No, we’re real, not just so digital fignts inside a computer. Yeah, that look, right there. That was how I felt at the ti.

I already knew you could take more ti to lower the difficulty check of a task, and the reverse to save ti. So, even though I used this second effect, I can’t say I learned it.