The creeping cloud destroyed the Totem as it spread across the floor.

  I tried placing another Totem, but the purple gas instantly got rid of it. The cloud was about to reach me; I had no choice but to flee. My Totem Juggling strategy couldn’t work on Bawu.

  No matter! I could provide a distraction so she wouldn’t attack my party mates.

  “Run, youngling!” advised the lead village guard as he fled from the furious Carrion Golem trying to electrocute him. “Be swift on your legs!”

  “What do you think I’m doing?” I shouted. “I’m trying to be as swift as I can on my short youngling legs.” Another explosion drowned out my words.

  Bawu cackled in the background.

  I badly needed a skill that’d help my speed. Then I remembered my leftover food from fighting Zoar Elab. One of them buffed movement speed. I hoped it’d be enough to help me survive.

  [Tart Dapple Juice: +15% Attack Speed, +15% Movement Speed for 20 Minutes] ★☆☆☆☆

  The other two guards launched ranged attacks while the leader baited the Carrion Golem. A pretty good tactic. A decade and a half later, the NPCs knew how to fight.

  NPC companions in the RPGs I played as a kid were always wonky in battle. Their movements were simple, mostly just attacking, cycling through their skills off cooldown, and healing when necessary. They were more of a liability than an asset unless they had incredibly high attributes to compensate for their stupidity.

  In comparison, these village guards employed some semblance of a strategy and were doing reasonably well.

  But only at surviving.

  The measly damage of their ranged attacks was gobbled up by the increased health regeneration of the Carrion Golem. My plan to distract Bawu while leaving the Carrion Golem to them wasn’t working.

  I veered in their direction. Bawu followed me, continuing to throw different kinds of bottles. Some exploded, and others contained gas. I kept looking over my shoulder to check what she was throwing. Where in Hierakon was she getting all these bottles?

  One of the guards taking potshots at the Carrion Golem noticed me. “Youngling, stay back!”

  I blew past him and continued on a path to intercept the Carrion Golem. As soon as I got close enough, I cast [Withering Brand] to slow it down. I immediately turned and headed back to the other side of the cavern to avoid Bawu bombing the village guards.

  We were at a stalemate. Our party couldn’t defeat Bawu and her pet, and they couldn’t kill us.

  Well, they actually could… Just that we weren’t letting them—a fancier way to say running for our lives.

  Not exactly a stalemate.

  “Get away from here, youngling!” our leader yelled as he continued to gallop. He pointed his spear toward the tunnel near Bawu. “Go there and pray it is a safe path. We will hold this massive brute.”

  Yeah, right, you can hold it. I had to find a way to save the guards because they were relying on me—according to me.

  My eyes were drawn to the green vats with monsters inside them. A plan began to formulate in my extraordinary brain.

  The normal Borple I met earlier was eating the corpse of its Blighted brother. Would the Carrion Golem also be enticed? Hopefully it’d attack the Blighted monsters if I freed them. I recalled that Blighted monsters aggressively attacked other creatures, including each other. They could provide distraction even if the Carrion Golem wouldn’t go for them.

  “Youngling, heed my words and go!” our leader shouted.

  “The vats!” I yelled back. “Lead that big guy to the vats with monsters inside them!” Would these NPCs listen to my orders? Or a youngling, for that matter?

  Thankfully, they did.

  The lead guard headed for the intact containers, followed by the ambling and angry Carrion Golem, followed in turn by the other two guards fruitlessly shooting its behind. I was also going to the vats with Bawu tagging along. The two of us were nearer.

  Using my sling, I flung stones at the vats. They harmlessly bounced off the glass.

  Too sturdy? Or I didn’t have enough damage to break it?

  Someone else could break it for me!

  “Where are you going, youngling?” Bawu said. “Entering a vat of your own accord? Eager to be a test subject?”

  I didn’t bother to answer. My eyes darted to her hands. She held a poison gas bottle, not a bomb. Dammit!

  I turned and ran to meet her, placing a Totem in her way. She threw the bottle at the Totem and then picked out another bottle that contained exploding chemicals.

  Yes! I headed to the vats. “Catch my test subject ass!”

  Our leader was about to reach the vats at the same time as me.

  The explosive bottle flew.

  I dug my hooves into the ground to stop my momentum, then leaped in the other direction, ducking to avoid the bottle as it arced downward. It landed near the vats.

  BOOM!

  Our leader was caught in the blast. Fortunately, he survived—I could see his health bar through the smoke obscuring my vision. I also noticed the lengthy health bar of the Carrion Golem.

  Then other health bars began to appear. The monsters inside the vats were free.

  “Brothers-in-arms, follow me!” I called.

  I placed two Totems in the fray as the dust began to settle. They cast [Enraging Call] at the monsters around them. The village guards disengaged from the fight as Bawu’s pet and the released test subjects attacked my Totems. After quickly taking out my frail summons, they turned on each other.

  The Carrion Golem easily thrashed the other monsters. But they did buy us several seconds.

  “To the exit!” our leader ordered. “Make haste while their eyes are not on us!”

  “You’re hijacking my plan?” I followed him.

  Bawu wasn’t throwing any more potions at us. She disapprovingly shook her head as she looked at her pet.

  “I’ll return later, I suppose,” I said with a shrug. I didn’t know where we were headed.

  And it turned out I wasn’t going to know as the third tunnel was blocked by a massive creature that revealed itself from the shadows.

  The health bar of the [Lvl 42 Chimera Borpillar: Melasbo] appeared first, followed by its ginormous body. Its flat head was as wide as my torso, and its clicking mandibles were like scythes. In place of insect legs, limbs and appendages from different monsters lined the length of its body. There were hands, feet, and even tentacles.

  “Oh, come on!” I threw up my hands in frustration. “Don’t tell me this is the sort of quest where I lose no matter what?”

  To answer my question that I didn’t want to be answered, the Chimera Borpillar sprayed our party with sticky webbing, tying us down. We tried to free ourselves, but Bawu threw a large bottle at us.

  A sweet scent went up my nose. I felt sleepy, something I hadn’t experienced before because tiredness and fatigue were nonexistent in this game. The only explanation was that it was a status.

  “It’s like… like that time… time with Buvalu,” I mumbled before blacking out. “Such a cheat…”

  CHAPTER

  THIRTEEN

  I awoke in a smaller cavern, facing the wall.

  Strange lights on the rocks. Mechanical sounds. A lot was going on behind me.

  I tried to get up from the floor but found myself tied by sticky strings, no doubt from the Chimera Borpillar. Clicking mandibles and grunting noises meant that both of Bawu’s pets were nearby.

  Hoofsteps became louder. “Oh, you’re awake, youngling.” Bawu stood beside me. “A youngling as a specimen… an exciting prospect. Perhaps there are new things to discover with you as a test⁠—”

  “Wait!” I said. “Mad, erm, Potion Brewer Bawu, I’m on your side. Your sister sent me.”

  “My sister?” Bawu scratched the bottom of her horn in thought. “Is that so? Which sister of mine? You will pay dearly if you speak lies!”

  “Healer Gula,” I readily answered. “You have more than one sister?”

  “No, only Gula.” She croakily laughed as if her throat was lined with sandpaper. “You simpleminded youngling, it was obviously a test!”

  “How was I supposed to know what your family tree looks like?”

  “It is Gula who sent you then? That would explain how you knew my name.”

  “Know your…?” My eyes darted upwards. That was right—she hadn’t introduced herself to me. “Yes, Healer Gula did send me,” I confirmed. “The two of you look similar, so I assumed you’re the sister I was looking for.”

  Hopefully, that was the right thing to say. I couldn’t tell if they did look similar; all Mardukryons looked the same to me. That shouldn’t make me racist, would it?

  “My sister… my sister…” Bawu paced. She cast many shadows on the cavern wall. “I should’ve expected that this day would come!” She clenched her bony fist and shook it in the air.

  “I sense there’s some misunderstanding going on here,” I said. “Is it because of the village guards with me?” I turned left and right, straining against the webs that wrapped my body.

  I was in another laboratory more packed with mad scientist paraphernalia than the previous one—dangerous-looking instruments, books and scrolls, models or probably real skeletons of monsters. I also spotted cages and a couple of vats in my limited vision. They were empty.

  Where were the village guards?

  “Gula has grown tired of me, hasn’t she?” Bawu furiously pointed her finger at me. “She told the guards how to find me. After all that I had done for her? The treachery! The betrayal! The disloyalty! The⁠—”

  “I’m going to stop your listing of synonyms and explain something. Healer Gula didn’t betray you. She tasked me with delivering a message to you, but I accidentally ran into the village guards investigating the tunnels. I had to go with them, or they would’ve been suspicious of me.”

  “Your tale reeks of deception! Guards in the tunnels? They have no reason to be here! Investigating what? Someone must’ve told them that I was hiding here! That can only be my sister.”

  “They’re investigating your escaped experiments.”

  “What nonsense do you speak?”

  I explained about the Blighted monsters spreading through the tunnels. I also told her about the sickness of Balasi. “And that’s why the guards are here,” I said. “Don’t you know what’s going on?”

  “These tunnels are my domain! Not a Borple can—yes, I don’t know what’s happening here,” she said, suddenly switching to a soft voice.

  My brows furrowed as her mannerisms changed in the snap of a finger. Her fury was gone. She crouched and clasped her hands like a lovely grandma going to church. Even the way she walked shifted from a confident trot to shuffling hooves as if she had arthritis. Can horses and cows get arthritis?

  “Dear me, my pretties have escaped?” Bawu gasped in mild shock. “I’ve been so engrossed with a new project that I forgot to check on my other precious darlings. Old age hasn’t been kind.”

  It was as if she was a different person.

  “Yes…” I narrowed my eyes at her. Was this why she was called the ‘Mad Brewer’? It wasn’t her evil-scientist experiments? “They have escaped. Healer Gula is concerned, so she sent me to warn you. Purely a coincidence that I met the village guards. Another coincidence that we found one of your laboratories.”

  “Coincidence upon coincidence,” Bawu said in a singsong voice. “A funny word. Coincidence.” She did a little dance as she walked away, seemingly forgetting about me.

  “My story does sound suspicious,” I loudly said to get her attention back. “But it’s the truth. I’ll show you the letter from your sister.”

  Bawu stopped and turned around.

  I struggled against the tight binding. “It’s proof of what I’m telling you. If you can just release me so I can—let me try this.” I opened my inventory with a thought command and selected the letter.

  The parchment, rolled tightly and tied with a string, floated in the air. Bawu grabbed the letter, cut the tie with her long fingernail, and read it.

  She continued to sing, “Coincidence, coincidence, coincidence… Oh, it is my dear sister’s handwriting! How wonderful that she wrote. Even though I have my pretties, it is lonely here in the tunnels.”

  The Carrion Golem grumbled louder, and the Chimera Borpillar rapidly clicked its mandibles.

  “They sound like nice company,” I said. “Does this clear up everything? Will you stop your experiments?”

  Bawu sighed as she rolled the parchment again. “If little Gula says so. I don’t want her to be angry with me,” she said as if she wasn’t disparaging her sister moments ago. “If I act nice, she might visit me again and gift me Swineling meat pie. It has been ages since we last saw each other.”

  “It’s as easy as this? All in a day’s work.” However, there was still no notification that Healer Gula’s quest was completed. Wasn’t it only to deliver the letter?

  [ Quest: Meeting the Mad Brewer ]

  Following Healer Gula’s instructions, carefully navigate the tunnels to find her sister, Potion Brewer Bawu. Deliver Gula’s letter without fail to stop Bawu’s experiments and prevent more Mardukryon injuries.

  Requirements: Wear the [Notched Frostore Amuelet] when meeting Bawu.

  Do not invite any suspicion of your Ancestral Flames

  Right, there was Gula’s advice, almost a command, that I planned to disobey. I probably needed to return to her first so she could confirm that I followed her instructions before the quest was deemed completed. I’ll do that then, I thought with a shrug.

  Or tried to. The webbing held my shoulders down.

  “Potion Brewer Bawu, can you please release me now?”

  “I forgot about you, dear youngling!” She snapped her finger. “Melasbo, my pretty, please help our guest.”

  There was loud scuttling. A large shadow fell over me. The Chimera Borpillar was definitely not pretty. It sprayed me with a vile liquid that dissolved the strings.

  “Eugh! Is there no other way to get rid of the strings?” I complained, feverishly wiping away the gooey mess from my body.

  “None, dearie.” Bawu looked me over in fascination. “Unless you’d rather the mandibles of Melsabo cut it.” She leaned down and cupped her hand around her mouth. “I don’t suggest that option.”

  “Good advice,” I replied with a grin. It’d be preferable if Bawu stayed like this instead of her crazed villain persona. Then I turned around to see the rest of the cavern. “What in blazing potatoes is going on here?”

  Strange machines with gears, pumps, and colorful crystals emitted odd lights. These contraptions were hooked via pipes to massive cylindrical vats filled with blue liquid, each larger than the other containers from before. They must be for Bawu’s hulking monster creations. The Carrion Golem could fit inside one.

  But these vats didn’t hold other abominable pets of Mad Brewer Bawu.

  “The guards,” I whispered.

  Two of them shared one vat while our leader floated in another. I thought they escaped from the sticky webs because they had higher levels than me. Nonetheless, the Chimera Borpillar was almost twice the level of a guard, and it seemed that we all had no chance of winning.

  I asked Bawu, “Are… are they dead?”

  “No, dearie. Such an awful thing to say.” She wore a mournful expression as if a Mardukryon could look anything else other than terrifying. “I wouldn’t dare kill a single creature. Every life is precious to me.”

  “Maybe you can release them?” I cautiously said. “Uh, pretty please?” I was wary of how Bawu would react to my suggestion. Just stay a nice grandma Mardukryon and don’t transform into the batshit insane villain part.

  “Goodness, no!” Bawu exclaimed. She shuffled forward at a snail’s pace, beckoning me to come along. “Your friends are resting right now. You don’t want to disturb them, do you?”

  “They can rest at their homes. I’ll lead them back to the village.”

  “No, no, dearie. This is a better place for them. They’ll feel invigorated and refreshed when they wake up as if they have new bodies.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “New bodies? Hang on… are you actually going to give them new bodies?”

  She turned to me with a big smile. “Of course, my precious youngling.”

  The glow from the blue vats caught the shadows of all the wrinkles and cracks on her face, turning her into the scariest being I’ve ever encountered in Mother Core Online. There should be a law against Mardukryon’s smiling.

  Would you look at that? Both of Bawu’s personalities were mad!

  One was just easier to talk to than the other.

  “I’m sure they’d rather not have a gift—” I began to say. Bawu stared at me with her four raving eyes about to bulge out of her head. Was her alter ego going to come out? “—because they visited you out of the goodness of their heart,” I quickly clarified. “They wouldn’t want any gift in return out of, um, politeness. Yes, politeness.”

  Her gentle demeanor returned. “But they already have their gifts,” she explained as if I were a child. Indeed, I was a youngling to her. “I can’t take that back now. Look how much they enjoy it.”

  I wasn’t sure if that meant the guards were at the point of no return or if she didn’t want to release them.

  “That reminds me,” she said. “I haven’t given you a reward for delivering my sister’s letter to me.”

  “If my reward is like them, then I’d rather—uh, I mean, my happiness from connecting two sisters is more than enough reward.” How could I escape from this situation?

  It might not be a bright idea to reveal my Ancestral Flame Arts—she’d put me in a vat. That must be the reason for her sister’s warning, and it was a good one. I needed to do something first to ensure I wouldn’t become a test subject. As with Healer Gula, how about I do small favors for Bawu?

  “Potion Brewer Bawu, maybe we should do something about your escaped experiments? I can help because I’m such an eager and hardworking youngling that doesn’t want to rest in a vat.”

  CHAPTER

 

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