Chương 11: WHY DIDN’T WE GET ISEKAI’D IN A CYBERPUNK WORLD

Her back was a fucking war crime. Muscular genocide. That was the first thing. The second thing was her armpits—they had passed Sephora territory and were now firmly in Walmart-Tuesday-3pm territory, with the specific kind of sweat-stink that came from sleeping fully dressed in a slut outfit on a straw mattress in a medieval inn after fighting a tentacle slime with a sex toy. Which was VERY specific. The third thing was her hair. She didn't even need to see her hair to know. She could feel it.

It was doing the thing. The fourth thing was Ben. Ben was asleep. Ben was full-on asleep, slumped sideways against the wooden headboard with the wax knife on his lap, mouth half-open, breathing like a guy who had been hit with a tranq dart. The morning light from the shuttered window was hitting him at a princess-y angle. The dust motes were dancing. The fucking dust motes.

Dust motes were dancing in the light around Ben Robinson, lit major from Westchester, and his open mouth and his wax knife and his fucked-up brown hair, and Maddy sat up in the straw and felt betrayed on a level she had not felt since her ex tried to take the Snorlax.

"Ben," she said. Her voice came out like a smoker had puked his entire lungs inside her throat.

"Ben. Dude. Did you fucking fall asleep." He made a sound that was less a word than a noise her mom used to make when she stubbed her toe. His eyes opened. They tracked the room in a small panicked arc and landed on her.

"Fuck."

"Yeah."

"Fuck shit. I fell asleep."

"No shit dude. Good thing we didn't get gangfucked by the slimes. Or fucking—John."

"... John?"

"He had weird…vibes. Like Jeffrey Dahmer vibes."

"He absolutely did not. He had Innkeeper trademark vibes."

"Shut up. He's weird." Ben sat up. He pushed his palms into his eyes. He looked at the wax knife on his lap like the wax knife had personally betrayed him, then he looked at her, and his face did a small ashamed thing that she chose not to acknowledge because she did not want him to feel bad about it for any longer than was funny.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"I mean. The inn's probably like, a safe place or some shit," she said.

"You can't get killed when you sleep in Minecraft."

"Minecraft logic. Stellar argument for safety."

"Shut up dude. I'm helping you here."

"Yeah."

"Like there's gotta be instance protection, right. Inns are always instances. You spawn in them. The system probably has a flag on this building that says HOSTILE_NPCS_DISABLED."

"You're making this up."

"I'm theorizing."

"You're…theorizing."

"I'm just saying." He rubbed his face.

"So do we like, go in the dungeon?" she said.

"... do we have a choice?"

"That's what I was gonna ask." She bit the inside of her cheek with her left molars and looked at the ceiling. There was a wooden beam with a knot in it shaped like an unhappy face. The knot stared back. She stared at the knot. The knot did not stare any harder, because it was a knot. This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. The choice was: go in the dungeon, or do not go in the dungeon.

If they did not go in the dungeon, the system would nag them about the quest, the screen would say something passive aggressive in cursive script with a sparkle emoji, and they would still be in this world with no class and no power and no way to get stronger and no idea what the goal even was. They would just be two American college kids hanging out in Mossgrove for the rest of their lives. Drinking ale. Stew. John. She did not want to drink ale with John for the rest of her life.

If they did go in the dungeon, there was a non-zero chance they'd just fucking die, but actually, would they die? Could they die? She had died once already, allegedly, and had woken up in pink grass. Ben had died once already too. He also told her the system had told him in a sparkle-emoji push notification that he could not kill himself, so. Death itself was kind of a question mark. Then again—Pony's head had come off. Pony's head had come all the way off and Pony had not respawned. So things could die.

Things could maybe die permanently. Even her. Probably her.

"Plus," she said, "the slimes weren't even that scary. We one-tapped them. With our weapons."

"With a dildo."

"With a dildo. Yeah."

"And a wax pen."

"Yeah."

"So. Tutorial monsters."

"Yes! Tutorial monsters."

"Yeah."

"And the dungeon is probably also a tutorial dungeon," she said.

"Because we just got off the tutorial monsters. The whole village vibe is a tutorial village. Mossgrove. With the inn. With the blacksmith. With the —""There's a blacksmith? Oh, right. I think I saw one yesterday."

"There has to be a blacksmith."

"Yeah."

"There's always a blacksmith in a tutorial village. Every shitty LitRPG. Every one."

"Right."

"Probably a fucking secluded dwarf who once was the greatest blacksmith of the small people mountains. And yeah." There was a pause.

"I…guess you're right," Ben said.

"And if we want to understand the system, and piss in its servers, well—we gotta get stronger, right?" She stared at him. He stared back.

"Shut up dude. You sound cringe as fuck."

"What."

"Piss in its servers. I said that. That's my line."

"I'm quoting you. And I thought about it before. So."

"It sounded better when I said it."

"It —""It sounded HARDER."

"Sure."

"But yeah. You're right."

"Thanks."

"Don't." She swung her legs off the bed. Her shorts had ridden up to a place that was structurally untenable for someone who was about to be vertical, and she yanked them down by the hem, the same way she'd been doing it since seventh grade. Her Air Force 1s were still on her feet. She had slept in her shoes. She had slept in her fucking shoes because she had not had the executive function to take them off. She looked at her feet. She looked at the floor.

"I need to piss."

"... okay?"

"Where do I piss." He stared at her.

"There's gotta be a—like—""A what," he said.

"A bathroom dude."

"Yeah. Or a hole."

"Fuck." She got up. She went to the door. She opened it. The hallway was empty and smelled like wood and old ale and a kind of background human funk that she suspected was the actual smell of the medieval period in general. She walked down the hall.

At the end of the hall there was a small wooden door with a crude symbol carved into it that was the universally recognized symbol of "this is the room where you shit your pants," which in this world looked like a small circle with a wavy line under it, which was not how she would have drawn it but was, apparently, how this world had agreed to draw it. She opened the door. INTAKE. One. The room was the size of a closet. Two. There was a wooden seat with a hole in it. Three.

The hole opened to a chute that disappeared into darkness she could not see the bottom of, and the smell coming up from the chute was a smell she did not want to talk about, not now and not ever. Four. There was a clay pot next to the seat with water in it. The water was not clean. There was a small floaty in it that she chose to interpret as a leaf. Five. There was no toilet paper. Six. There was no toilet paper. Seven. THERE WAS NO FUCKING TOILET PAPER. Eight.

There was a small pile of dry leaves beside the pot, in a wooden bin. Nine. The leaves were for wiping. Ten. She was wearing no underwear. Eleven. She had to pee. Twelve. She had to pee badly. Thirteen. The leaves had thorns on them. Fourteen. The leaves did not have thorns on them, she was hallucinating from rage, the leaves were soft fuzzy leaves of some kind. They had been picked specifically for not having thorns.

Someone, somewhere, was responsible for sourcing thornless soft leaves for the village privy, and that person was working hard at a job that did not exist on Earth. She closed the door behind her. She did what she had to do. She used the leaves. The leaves performed acceptably. She left the small room. Ben was in the hall leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, looking very specifically at the ceiling, like a guy who had decided to be a gentleman about whatever had just happened in the room behind her.

"Your turn," she said.

"How is it."

"Don't."

"Bad?"

"There's leaves."

"Leaves?"

"For wiping."

"... oh."

"Yeah."

"Fuck."

"Yeah." He went in. She stood in the hall. She heard the door close. She heard a very small, very specific sound of a man making peace with his life choices. She heard nothing for a minute. Then she heard a very low Fucking shit from behind the door.

"Couldn't we have fucking isekai'd into a cyberpunk world," he yelled, muffled.

"I KNOW."

"WITH PLUMBING."

"I KNOW."

"WITH A FUCKING BIDET."

"I KNOW." He came out a minute later. He was not making eye contact with her. She was not making eye contact with him.

"Breakfast," she said.

"Yeah."