Chương 18: Why the Fuck Do You Know the Word Deodorant

The mace was heavier than she remembered. The mace had been heavy when she picked it up off the floor of the boss chamber and the mace was heavier now that she had been dragging it for a full fucking mile of dirt road in the late afternoon sun, with the bones at the end clacking against every rock and rut on the trail in a way that suggested the mace had personal opinions about being dragged. Her shoulder was on fire. Her crop top had ridden up.

Her shorts had committed a series of fresh felonies against her thighs. The Talisman of Greed glittered on her clavicle, and the Talisman of Greed was, she was starting to suspect, the actual problem here, because every time her brain tried to suggest dropping the mace the talisman pulsed gently and reminded her, somehow without words, that the mace had RESALE VALUE. She hated the talisman. She loved the talisman. She was dragging the mace.

"You okay," Ben said.

"I'm fine."

"You're dragging a mace."

"I am AWARE I am dragging a mace, Ben." He was walking beside her with his arms full of rusted goblin knives, the bone fork, a small pouch of clinking copper coins, the Eldarion amulet in his pocket, and his wax knife on his hip. He kept looking at her dragging the mace in a way that was not concerned exactly but was, like, adjacent to concerned, and she did not want to talk about it. A panel chimed beside her ear. [Quest Complete: Clear the Crypt of the Forgotten Sigil of Eldarion's Folly!] [Bonus XP awarded!] [Ben: Level Up!]"OH SHIT," Ben said.

"You leveled?"

"From the quest. I thought it already gave us the XP. Maybe the dungeon and the quest were two different things. I—I do not give a single shit actually." He was at Level 7. She was at Level 10. She was still three ahead of him, and she could see the small private dignity he allowed himself in the slight straightening of his shoulders when his level ticked up, like he was about to dust her in a footrace that had already finished. He stopped walking. He pulled up his stat panel.

She kept dragging the mace because she had momentum. He squinted.

"Wait. Maddy."

"What?"

"Why is my HP 105..." She stopped dragging. The mace stayed where it had stopped, because heavy things did…heavy stuff. Yeah. She walked over and squinted at his blue screen. [Level: 7] [HP: 105/105] [MP: 20/20] [STR: 15 | DEX: 19 | INT: 23 | WIS: 10 | CHA: 12 | LCK:???] [Unallocated Points: 5]"... you have a hundred and five HP," she said.

"I have a hundred and five HP."

"Pull up mine."

"Pull it yourself. The fuck."

"Right." She summoned her panel. [Level: 10] [HP: 100/100] [MP: 28/28] [STR: 11 | DEX: 15 | INT: 20 | WIS: 14 | CHA: 11 | LCK:???] [Unallocated Points: 30] She stared at it. She stared at it for a long second.

"... I have a hundred."

"Yes."

"You have a hundred and five."

"I have a hundred and five." He was smiling.

"You put one point in CHA at the inn," she said.

"Right?"

"Yeah. I guess. For talking to the NPCs and shit."

"But your HP went up by five."

"Apparently."

"So CHA is HP."

"CHA is…HP," he said.

"Charisma. CHA is fucking charisma. It's the social stat. It's the talk-to-NPCs stat. And the system has decided that talking to NPCs increases your health bar by five points."

"I didn't put any in CHA."

"I know you didn't."

"I'm at base HP because I didn't put a point in the wrong-name stat."

"Yes."

"You're stronger than me. Tankier. Whatever."

"By five HP. Yes."

"Ben."

"What."

"I have thirty unallocated points." He stopped smiling.

"... what."

"Three. Zero. Thirty."

"You—you didn't allocate in the dungeon."

"I didn't allocate in the dungeon. I was busy. I had a Hyper Beam queued. And I was at x5 Energized. I was—I had a process, okay?"

"What process."

"I had a process. Like."

"You hoarded the XP and you hoarded the points."

"Shut up. I didn't. I seized the… opportunities that were presented to me." He put his hand on his face. She allocated. She allocated, careful and exact, the most careful she'd been since her freshman final project, the little Arduino-controlled servo she'd calibrated and been so proud of and her mom had kept on the kitchen counter for a month and a half. She put ten in CHA because she also wanted to live and the math on CHA was just objectively the most efficient survivability dump in the game.

She put six in WIS because she had noticed, in the slime fight earlier, that her MP had moved up since the Cybertruck and that the amount it had moved correlated suspiciously with the points she had put in WIS at the inn, and she had filed that away and was now cashing in on the filing. She put seven in STR and six in DEX because her body had been weaker than she liked it in the dungeon and she did not enjoy this. She put one in INT. Her panel updated.

[Level: 10] [HP: 150/150] [MP: 40/40] [STR: 18 (+7) | DEX: 21 (+6) | INT: 21 (+1) | WIS: 20 (+6) | CHA: 21 (+10) | LCK:???] [Unallocated Points: 0] Ben was reading her panel over her shoulder.

"... you have 150 HP." Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

"I have 150 HP."

"You only put one in INT."

"Count yourself lucky. I could've whooped your ass."

"You went from a hundred to one-fifty in a single allocation."

"Yes."

"That's not fair."

"It IS fair. I earned this. By hoarding XP. From you."

"From me. Yes."

"You can allocate now. Peasant." He allocated. Three in CHA. One in STR. One in DEX. His panel updated to HP 120/120 and his stats inched marginally up across the board, and he looked at his panel, and he looked at her panel, and his eye did a thing she could see from the side.

"You're stronger than me again," he said.

"I know."

"You're also tankier than me."

"I know."

"You're smarter than me by minus two points."

"It's so you don't cry too much."

"I know."

"It pisses you off doesn't it."

"It pisses me off." She picked up the mace. She started dragging. The road did the road thing. She walked. She was sweating in a way that should not have been physically possible for the temperature of the air.

The two suns were lower now, both of them, the blue one closer to the horizon than the yellow, and the light had gone the specific orange-blue color of a sunset on a planet that had two suns, which was to say, it looked like a movie's idea of a sunset on a planet with two suns, except it was real, except she was in it, except she was dragging a fucking mace through it. Her body had a list.

Her body had been keeping a list since she had woken up on pink grass and the list had been growing and the list, right now, in no particular order, was: One. Shower. Two. Something for the smell. The smell situation. The smell of her, which she did not need to describe to herself. Three. Real underwear. Cotton. Plain. Whatever. She had not worn underwear in over thirty hours and the friction situation in her shorts was approaching a medical concern. Four. Different clothes. Anything.

Anything that was not these clothes. These clothes had been chosen for a stream and then for a class and then for a Cybertruck death and then for an isekai, and at no point in any of those use cases had they been designed for actually living in. Five. Toothbrush. Six. A bed that was not straw. Seven. Her mom. She did not want to think about her mom right now. Her mom would come up later, on its own schedule. She would deal with it then.

"Ben."

"What."

"I need a fucking shower."

"You already said that."

"I haven't said it yet."

"You've been broadcasting it for an hour. It's been in the air. It's been a vibe."

"Fuck you."

"You smell."

"DON'T."

"You asked."

"I did not ASK. I broadcasted a vibe."

"The vibe was asking."

"The vibe was—okay. I miss leggings, dude. I miss leggings so much. I want to be inside a pair of black ribbed cotton leggings right now more than I want literally anything else in this world."

"More than you want to go home?"

"... don't."

"Sorry."

"Don't." A pause.

"More than I want to go home for fifteen minutes," she said.

"Then I'd want to go home."

"Right." They kept walking. The mace clacked. Ben adjusted the load of knives in his arms. Mossgrove came into view around a curve in the road. The little village had not changed since this morning. The same low buildings. The same chicken. The same blacksmith forge still glowing visible through Thorin's open door. The same villagers doing the same NPC tasks they had been doing since the dawn of NPC time. She had never been so happy to see a fake village in her life.

"Inn," she said. They walked into Mossgrove dragging an evil skeleton mace and a pile of goblin loot, and a few villagers turned to look at them, and a few villagers turned back away, because apparently this was very normal and very not concerning. They walked to the Rusted Tankard. The inn was warm. The inn smelled like bread and stew and small beer.

John was behind the bar polishing a tankard with the same cloth he had been polishing tankards with last night, which suggested either continuity or that John's character model had a polishing animation that played on loop until interrupted. He looked up. His face lit up.

"Travelers! You return! And you carry—what is that, traveler?"

"It's a mace," Maddy said."

"Made out of bones?"

"... goblin bones," Ben said.

"Hobgoblin bones," Maddy said.

"No wait. His mace is probably made of humans…not fucking hobgoblins. Human bones mace. Yes."

"Great fucking marketing pitch," Ben said.

"Shut up Ben. I'm the greedy talisman hoarder. I know what I'm doing." John stopped. He stared at the mace for what was probably six seconds and was probably the longest period of time John's character had ever been frozen since his code was generated. Maddy could see, in how John's eyes flicked from the mace to the rusted knives in Ben's arms to the bone fork to the small pouch of coppers, that something in John's NPC priority tree had been activated.

"You have cleared the Crypt," he said slowly.

"By yourselves."

"Yeah dude. Real good observation," Maddy said.

"... you killed the hobgoblin."

"Well she did," Ben said.

"In one shot," Maddy added, because he was still pissed about the skill issue line and she was going to milk this for at least another twenty-four hours. John's jaw did a small thing. The villagers at a nearby table looked over. They had been eating stew. They had stopped eating stew. A villager whispered something to another villager. The other villager whispered back. They both looked at Maddy with slightly-too-wide NPC eyes, like they'd just received a major story flag from the system.

"Travelers," John said.

"Goblin matter is rare. The Crypt has not been cleared in many seasons. Hobgoblin remains—these are valuable. To alchemists. To enchanters. To the guilds. I would buy these from you, if you are willing."

"How much."

"Five golds for the lot." Maddy looked at Ben. Ben looked at her. Five golds was—well, she did not know exactly what five golds was, because John had refused to give her an exchange rate yesterday, but yesterday a single egg had bought them a room with two beds and a meal and two ales, and five golds felt like a number of magnitudes higher than one egg.

"Make it eight," Ben said.

"Six."

"Seven." Maddy's brain shut down. Her hands moved a little on their own, doing aggressive little movements. Six seven six seven. Fucking Instagram dude.

"Seven," John said.

"We have deal." John counted out seven gold coins from a small box behind the bar and slid them across the wood. The slide had some resentment in it. Obviously. He'd just been outhaggled by foreigners in clothing he didn't understand. Dumb clanker. Maddy scooped the coins into her hand. They were warm. They felt good. The Talisman of Greed pulsed gently against her clavicle.

"Now," John said, business voice back on.

"Room? Meal?"

"Room nine. Same as last night. Two meals. And fucking…unlimited beers."

"One gold."

"That's WAY MORE than yesterday."

"Yesterday you paid in eggs, traveler. Gold is more dignified than eggs, but it is also priced for dignity. Plus, seven golds was a bit much, ha-ah" Yeah. Laugh again John. Fucking NPC doing jokes. How about a Hyper Beam in your NPC ass face. Would that be funny. WOULD THAT BE FUNNY JOHN. She did not tell this to John. She slid one gold back across. John disappeared it into the box and slid the wooden key tag across. She stood there. She had to ask.

She had been planning the ask the entire walk back from the dungeon and she had not yet figured out how to phrase the ask, because she did not know what the word for what she wanted was in this world, and she did not want to use her word and find out hers did not translate.

"John."

"Yes, traveler."

"Do you have... I need..." She gestured at her armpit. John looked at her armpit. John looked back at her face. His face was patient, blank, NPC.

"... there's a thing," she said.

"From where I come from. It's a thing you put under your arm. Under both arms. It stops the smell."

"Ah," John said.

"The smell."

"Yes."

"Underarm smell."

"Yes."

"You wish to prevent it."

"Yes."

"There is a... salve? An oil?"

"It's like—a stick. It's a stick. You roll it. Or—you don't, cause here it would be different, but it's a stick. You put it under your arms. It smells like flowers usually."

"A scented salve."

"Sure."

"For the underarm."

"Yes."

"Ah." John's face brightened in NPC recognition.

"You speak of the deodorant." Maddy froze.

"... the what."

"The deodorant. Yes. We sell it. We have several scents. The lavender is most popular."

"... the deodorant."

"The deodorant."

"You—John."

"Yes, traveler."

"That's a word in my language."

"Is it, traveler?"

"That's literally a word from my world. The word for the thing. Deodorant."

"... yes. That is the word for the thing."

"WHY DO YOU HAVE THE SAME WORD." John's NPC eyes did the slightly confused thing.

"Traveler, it is the word for the thing."

"WHY IS IT THE SAME WORD."

"What other word would it be?"

"Armpit fucking magic! Underarm cream! Pit stick! Anything! ANYTHING ELSE!"

"Traveler, the deodorant is the deodorant." She stared at him. She did not have a response. She was reaching, briefly, for Bolt, because there was a part of her brain that had been very calm in the dungeon and was now warming up to the idea of Hyper Beaming John, just to see what the system would do, just to see if the system would intervene, just to clear the air a little.

"Maddy," Ben said quietly.

"I'm not."

"You're touching Bolt."

"... I'm not." She pulled her hand back. John pulled a small wooden tray out from under the counter and set it on the bar. The tray had on it three small wooden sticks, each about the length and width of a stick of deodorant, each with a small label carved into the wood. Maddy picked one up. She uncapped it. It smelled like lavender. It smelled exactly like lavender. It smelled exactly like the deodorant her mom had bought her in eighth grade.

"How much?"

"Two coppers each." She paid with the little pouch of copper they kept. She took two. She had a third one in her hand before she realized she had bought three because she was now apparently a deodorant prepper, and she put one back, and John, who was apparently above teasing her about this, said nothing.

"Bath," she said.

"One copper for the communal pool. Two coppers for a private chamber."

"... the bath is communal?"

"It is the bath, traveler."

"Is the communal pool the same water that everyone uses…" John tilted his head.

"What?"

"Like—has the water been changed today. Or is it the same water from yesterday. Or two days ago. Or—""Traveler."

"Yes."

"The water is changed for each bather. It would be most disgusting to bathe in another's water, would it not." She stared at him. She stared at him.

"Most…disgusting."

"Yes."

"As if it would be DISGUSTING to bathe in WATER that someone else had been in."

"Yes, traveler."

"John."

"Yes, traveler?"

"You're really committed to that bit."

"... what bit, traveler?"

"Forget it. Private chamber. Two coppers." She paid. She did not trust the communal pool no matter what John said about the water, because she did not trust John, she did not trust the NPC priority tree that ran John, she did not trust this world, she did not trust the system, and the only thing she trusted right now was a small wooden room with a small wooden tub and her own private bath water that no other person had ever, allegedly, touched.

"And clothes," she said. John, again, produced a tray from under the counter. The tray, this time, had folded fabric on it. Brown fabric. Coarse brown fabric. Brown fabric that suggested it had been spun from the wool of a sheep that had been having a really hard fucking week. Maddy picked up the top item. It was a tunic. A peasant tunic.

It smelled like animals, like a specific animal she could not identify but which definitely had a name in this language, and the name was probably very pastoral and very rural and very not-the-vibe-she-was-going-for. She put the tunic down.

"How much."

"Two silvers for the tunic."

"For this brown piece of shit."

"The wool is of fine quality. From the Frosthorn sheep of the—""I'm keeping my clothes."

"... traveler?"

"I'm keeping my own clothes."

"As you wish."