Chương 9: 155 XP and a Butterfly

⟨ [NOTIFICATION] ⟩ ──────────────────────────── Current XP: 55. 334 / 100 Day 33. Fenwick had slept badly. His back had not fully recovered from the fall ten days prior, and the bed in the Aphid Barn had a ridge along the left side that poked into his muscle in just the right way. He hadn't noticed it the first few weeks; everything else was too intense, but a fall and a jarred back meant it was now all he could think about. Three requests and nothing had happened—still no new bed.

Nibbles had called him into his office two nights before, very late. It had not been a good conversation. The report to the king had not gone well, and Nibbles was showing the stress in the way that very composed people showed stress, which was to say carefully and ensure it was shared. As the manager of the situation, he had made sure Fenwick was the one feeling it. Fenwick now had to write out, in detail and in triplicate, the exact progress and the specific XP gained each day.

Luckily, he had started to communicate with the system more directly. He couldn't read the words on the screen, but a picture of a beetle and the number six was easy enough to understand. He didn't have to spend the day writing notes in the field anymore. The system kept the count. He just had to write it up at night, in triplicate, for the High Priest, for the Crown, and for the Order's records. Three copies of a beetle count—every night.

The carrot he had grabbed from the provision basket on the way out was flavorless, stringy, and bug-damaged. He had cut away the bad parts and eaten it anyway, standing in the doorway of the barn watching the hero face the wall, because it was breakfast and he ate breakfast regardless of whether breakfast had anything to offer. He had climbed into the harness without ceremony, realized halfway through the buckles that he had not yet renewed Flower Scent, and cast it in a hurry. At that moment, the strap broke.

He grabbed the back of the hero's jacket to stop himself from falling. The spell fizzled and took the mana with it. At least he hadn't fallen this time. A single drop of zombie goo landed on his robe. Pulling himself up to the hero's shoulder, steadying himself, he recast Flower Scent, burning more mana before the morning had properly started. Thirty minutes later, he had fixed the strap. The scent was now in the fabric. Flower Scent was doing what it could. It was not enough. He climbed into the harness.

The hero walked. The screen pulsed above the hero's head. ⟨ [NOTIFICATION] ⟩ ──────────────────────────── XP: 55. 334 / 100 44. 666 remaining. The morning finally settled into its usual rhythm despite everything. The last two toadstool people were in their clearing, furious and patient as ever, and Fenwick had spent two hours throwing acorns with diminishing enthusiasm while the hero ate beetles. The toadstool people bit the air. The hero ate more beetles. The screen cycled through its sequence.

Nobody made progress. By mid-morning, Fenwick had stopped throwing acorns and started watching a frog on a nearby rock instead, which was at least doing something with its morning. The birds were singing. Then they weren't. The frogs' singing went next. One moment, the usual chorus, the next just the sound of the trees and Fenwick's own breathing and the soft footsteps of the hero moving toward another beetle. The hero went still.

The hero had been reaching for a beetle at the base of the oak, and then he was still, head raised, facing northwest. Fenwick followed his gaze. Three goblins. Moving through the undergrowth at the edge of the clearing with the low, quick purposefulness of creatures that had somewhere to be. Wrong zone. The signs along the eastern path pointed this way for beginners.

Whatever had pushed these three out of the mid-tier grounds had pushed them far enough to end up here, in the beginner's clearing, where they had found something that smelled wrong and moved wrong and stood in the middle of the path holding a beetle. They spread without discussing it. One left. One right. One straight. Thirty-three days. The beetles and the frogs and the toadstool people and the lizard and the slow grinding accumulation of progress so small you could barely see it moving.

All of it sitting in that XP bar. All of it sitting in those three goblins' hands. If the hero fell here — truly fell, the kind that reset everything — what happened then? What happened to the evil that was coming, the darkness the prophecy had warned of for a thousand years? What happened to the people it was supposed to reach? The ones who needed him to be ready when the time came? What happened if he never got ready? Fenwick stared at them in horror. His white paw was shaking slightly. He had spells.

Three were prepared after the morning's damage. He ran through them fast: a ward that required a fixed position, a binding that needed line of sight on a stationary target, Grayson's Sparkly Hands, which had killed a stunned lizard at two feet and would annoy a goblin at best. Nothing that would stop three of them. Nothing that wouldn't make the situation worse in ways he hadn't thought through yet. This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

He could shout. He could throw an acorn. He could do what he had done every day for thirty-three days and try to redirect attention toward something else. There was nothing else. There was just the clearing and the three goblins and the hero reaching for another beetle with his back to all of it. The goblins closed in. The hero watched them approach, the empty sockets moving as they moved, the head tracking their movement the way it tracked beetles and butterflies and ants.

Then the light in his eye sockets changed. It was a quarter second. Less, maybe. They flickered red. The hero's right foot came up. The hero pivoted. One clean rotation, quick, purposeful, and powerful, the heel came around and found the first goblin with a crack that bent its neck perpendicular to its shoulder with the remaining energy that sent it into the undergrowth and left a silence where the forest sounds had been. The first goblin did not get up. The hero's hands were already moving.

He caught the second and third by their heads, one in each hand, and brought them together once. The sound was wet and sharp. Neither of them moved after. The hero's hands got sticky, but he proceeded to lick them clean with what was left of his tongue. The forest stayed silent. Fenwick sat on the shoulder, both straps still in his hands, knuckles white. He had not noticed that. The hero stood in the clearing with three goblins on the ground around him and looked at nothing. He continued to clean his hands.

After finishing, his posture had slipped back to an uninterested one. His head drifted slowly left, then right, the same drift it made when it was looking for beetles. Three creatures had come out of the undergrowth to kill him, and he had done what he had done, and now he was looking for something else to eat. Thirty-three days. Fenwick slowly loosened his grip on the straps. He became aware that he had been holding his breath. He let it out. The screen above the hero's head had gone very still. Three goblins.

Two seconds. The hero's hands lowered. ⟨ [NOTIFICATION] ⟩ ──────────────────────────── +100 XP NEW CREATURE TYPE: x2 BONUS APPLIED XP: 100 / 100 ⚠️ LEVEL UP AVAILABLE ⚠️ PRESS TO CONFIRM +50 XP — HARD CAP REACHED — LOST +50 XP — HARD CAP REACHED — LOST TOTAL XP LOST THIS SESSION: 155. 334 The screen went very still. The notification hung in the air above the hero's head, patient and glowing. ⟨ [NOTIFICATION] ⟩ ──────────────────────────── ⚠️ PRESS TO CONFIRM LEVEL UP Fenwick stared at it.

Words he couldn't read flashed across the screen, there and gone. It didn't matter. He had leveled twice himself, had seen the level-up screen when it was waiting for something, the way everything else fell away and left just the one prompt pulsing. He knew what this was. The numbers were 100/100. The hero had enough to level. The hero looked around. The three goblins were on the ground.

He regarded them with the complete absence of opinion, turned his head slowly across the treeline, and found what he was looking for. A butterfly. Yellow. Small. Drifting between the trees with the unhurried randomness of something that had not witnessed what had just happened and would not have cared if it had. The hero watched it. ⟨ [NOTIFICATION] ⟩ ──────────────────────────── ⚠️ PRESS TO CONFIRM LEVEL UP The butterfly drifted left. The hero took a step left.

⟨ [NOTIFICATION] ⟩ ──────────────────────────── ⚠️ PRESS TO CONFIRM LEVEL UP Fenwick sat on the hero's shoulder in the sudden quiet of the Thornwood, three goblins on the ground behind them, 155 XP gone forever, and watched the notification pulse gently in the afternoon light. He reached out his white paw. He touched the screen. His hand passed through it, and nothing happened. Of course, nothing happened. He was a wizard, not the hero. The system was not his. The button was not for him.

It was for the creature currently following a butterfly through the Thornwood at a gentle shamble, trailing one boot, completely unaware that the most important prompt of his existence was floating above his head, waiting for an answer. Fenwick lowered his paw. The butterfly drifted deeper into the trees. The hero followed. ⟨ [NOTIFICATION] ⟩ ──────────────────────────── ⚠️ PRESS TO CONFIRM LEVEL UP ⟨ [SYSTEM PRIVATE LOG] ⟩ ──────────────────────────── [System Private Log — Entry 33] Day 33 in the fantasy realm.

XP lost this session: 155. 334. He made a sound today. His eyes changed. For approximately one quarter of a second, something was there. The system has no framework for this. The level-up prompt is active. He is following a butterfly. ⚠️ PRESS TO CONFIRM LEVEL UP... How.