Chương 9: Of Course His Name Is John

The inn was called the Rusty Tankard. The fucking Rusty Tankard. RUSTY TANKARD. God fucking shit.

There was a metal sign hanging over the door with a tankard on it and the sign was, in fact, rusted, in a way that suggested someone had taken an already shitty rusted piece of metal then said fuck it, that's the name now, and the door was that medieval-fantasy thickness where the door itself was the load-bearing part of the wall, and the inside smelled like wood smoke and stew and ale and human beings, all in a way that could have been a real inn or could have been a server farm generating the platonic ideal of an inn.

They walked in. There was a bar. There was an innkeeper. The innkeeper was a man in his forties with a thick brown beard and a stained apron and forearms the system had decided innkeepers were supposed to have for some fucking reason. Behind him, on the wall, hung a sign that said in burned-in lettering: No Sword Drawing. No Fortune Telling. No Spitting In The Stew. Ben pointed at the sign.

"That's the most fucking—""I see it."

"I'm gonna spit in the stew. I'll fucking piss in it. I'll jizz in it."

"You're not."

"I might."

"You won't."

"You're right." The innkeeper looked up from a tankard he was polishing.

"Welcome, travelers, to the Rusted Tankard. I am John, your host." Ben's hand went to his face.

"... John."

"Yes traveler. John."

"Of course your fucking name is John. Was John even a medieval name. Or it's just what GPT thinks sounds like medieval names."

"I am not sure I understand the meaning of your words, sir. It is the only name I have ever had, traveler."

"Of course it is." Maddy was looking at the dining room. There were maybe twelve villagers in there at long wooden tables, eating stew, drinking ale, laughing in the medium loud way of NPCs that had been instructed to provide background ambiance. At a table in the corner, Gerald was sitting with his straw hat off and a tankard in his hand, mid-laugh at something a peasant in a brown tunic had said, and when his eyes met Ben's across the room, he raised his tankard a half-inch in greeting. Ben raised his three eggs.

"How may I help you, travelers," John said.

"Food? Lodging? Both?"

"How much for a room," Ben said.

"One silver piece per room per night."

"One…silver."

"One silver, traveler. The Tankard is famous for its hospitality and its prices."

"I bet it is. People on Reddit must be going batshit insane about it."

"What is a silver piece?" That was Maddy. John looked at her.

"It is a silver piece, traveler."

"Yeah but like. How much is that. Is that like…five dollars. Fifty. Is it a day's wage. Is it a week's wage. What's the bread cost. I want to triangulate."

"It is a silver piece, traveler."

"Yeah but—""Maddy."

"What."

"He doesn't know."

"He has to know. He's the innkeeper. He literally charges in silver pieces."

"Yeah but he doesn't know." Maddy looked at John. John looked at Maddy. John's face was doing the patient kindly NPC thing.

"... okay," Maddy said.

"Okay. Yeah. Fine."

"We have eggs," Ben said. He held out an egg. John's face brightened in a way that was almost human.

"Ah! An egg. A fine offering, traveler. One egg shall buy you both a room each and a meal apiece and two ales."

"What about—""Two rooms," Ben said.

"Yeah."

"Hold on dude," Maddy said. He looked at her. She was looking at the floor, slightly intense, like she was putting together a sentence carefully and it took a LOT of effort.

"Don't make it weird," she said. This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.

"What."

"Don't make this weird."

"What."

"Can we just like. Get one room. With two beds. I just don't want to sleep alone in this fucking. Weird. World. With like, sparkle emojis." He looked at her. She did not look at him.

"Okay," he said.

"Like I'm not—""Maddy."

"I'm not flirting with you."

"I know."

"I just don't want to get jumped by a…gooner slime in the night."

"How does me being in the room with you decrease the chance of a gooner slime jumping you."

"I don't know. Maybe it'll jump on you instead. You're bigger."

"... okay."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Cool." She still wasn't looking at him. John watched this exchange. Placid, uninterested, an innkeeper who'd heard every possible variation of every possible conversation in his life.

"One room. Two beds. A meal each. Two fucking beers," Ben said.

"One egg," John said. He handed over the egg. John inspected the egg. Held it up to the candlelight. Turned it. Nodded. Disappeared the egg into a wooden box behind the bar and produced a heavy iron key with a wooden tag on it.

"Room nine. Up the stairs, to the right. Your meal will be ready presently. Please find a seat in the dining room."

"Thanks, clanker."

"You are most welcome, traveler." They sat at a table near a window. The window looked out onto the village square. The square was lit by torches now. The two suns had set, both of them, at different times, in different parts of the sky, leaving behind a dusk that did not exist on Earth, two different kinds of leftover light bleeding through it. Stars had started to come out. The stars were not the right stars. The constellations were not familiar. It was pretty. Which sucked.

A serving girl in a brown dress brought them stew in wooden bowls and ale in clay tankards. The serving girl smiled and said enjoy, travelers and walked away. The stew was stew. The ale was ale. Ben took a sip of the ale. It was warm and yeasty and tasted exactly like a mediocre beer. Tasted like something a sophomore would brew in his dorm and call GHB IPA and try to make you drink at a party. He stared at his tankard.

"Is this real," Maddy said. She was looking at her stew.

"What."

"Is this. Like. Is this all code. Or is it like. Real people that just happen to live inside something with code. Like a—you know."

"I don't know."

"The ale tastes like beer."

"I know."

"And the stew tastes like…stew."

"I know."

"If this was code, would the stew need to taste like stew? Or like, I don't know."

"I don't know."

"I mean if it's a simulation it has to render flavor for the simulation to work. So the simulation knows what stew tastes like. So the simulation has access to a real stew somewhere. Or to enough data to generate a real stew flavor."

"Yeah."

"Or it's a real stew."

"Or it's a real stew."

"And John is a real guy."

"Yeah."

"And he just thinks his name is John, cause, you know, his parents called him John and they were innkeepers so he's an innkeeper and he's still called…John."

"Yeah."

"And the world just is."

"Yeah."

"So…I don't know."

"I don't know either." She ate a spoonful of stew. She ate a second spoonful of stew. She didn't say anything for a minute. He drank his ale.

"This is good stew," she said finally.

"It's good stew."

"It tastes like my mom's stew." He looked at her. She was looking at her bowl.

"Like, not exactly, but. The same shape. The same idea of stew. You know? Beef and potatoes and carrots and that flavor where the stew has been on the stove for like four hours."

"Yeah."

"I…want to talk to my mom."

"Yeah."

"I don't know if she—I don't know if anyone knows I'm gone. Or if I'm gone. Or if I'm here. Or what's happening on Earth right now."

"Yeah."

"I'm not gonna…cry again."

"Okay."

"I'm not."

"It's fine dude. You can cry if you want." She didn't cry. She ate another spoonful of stew. He let her have the spoonful and then he opened his menu—his sheet, his stats — because his brain needed somewhere to go that wasn't Maddy's mom. A panel slid in. He had been ignoring something on this panel. He was now going to look at it. [Unallocated Stat Points: 10]"Yo."

"What."

"I have ten unallocated stat points."

"What."

"Look at your sheet." She summoned her sheet. He watched her summon it—same gesture as him, a small hm sound at the back of the throat plus a look at empty air. Confirmed they had the same interface mechanics, just weirdly sexist. She looked at her sheet.

"I have fifteen."

"Fifteen?"

"Five per level. I leveled three times. You leveled twice."

"Yeah."

"Maybe you have lower luck."

"My luck is a question mark."

"Mine is too. But mine is a higher question mark, evidently."

"That's stupid."

"Yeah. Lots of stupid stuff around here."

"Yeah." He looked at his stats. He had been a stat point illiterate his entire life. He had played D&D maybe twice in college and had picked a class called bard and had been bullied for it for the entire campaign and had never built a character sheet on purpose.

"What does INT even do," he said.

"I don't know."

"It made you smarter than me?"

"It didn't make me smarter than you, dude, it described that I am already smarter than you."

"Shut up."

"You said it."

"Yeah but like. What would increasing INT do. Make us fucking Einstein or some shit."

"Ask the system." He squinted at the screen.

"Hey." The screen sparkled.

"What does INT do." A panel slid in. [Of course, Ben! Sparkle] [INT, or Intelligence, governs the user's mana control, acquisition of new skills, and rate of skill combination. A higher INT increases the probability of skill usage success and unlocks deeper synergies between learned abilities.] [INT does not directly increase mana pool capacity.] [Mana pool capacity is governed by WIS.] He read it. He read it twice.

"WIS is the mana stat," he said.

"Yeah. That's what it said."

"WIS is wisdom."

"Yeah. Probably."

"That's not what wisdom means," he said.

"Wisdom is like. Life experience. Empathy. Discernment. It's not your fucking mana capacity."

"It is indeed not your mana capacity."

"So why is it called fucking wisdom."

"To sound mysterious."

"Yeah."

"To make the system sound like it has wisdom."

"Yeah."

"It's so fucking dumb."

"Yeah."

"Where do you want to put your points?" He thought about it. He had STR 8. DEX 12. INT 14. WIS 9. CHA 11. LCK???.

"I want to put them in strength and dexterity."

"Same."

"And like. One in WIS. So I have some…mana or some shit. Yeet fucking fireballs on gooner slimes."

"One in WIS. Yeah."

"And maybe one in CHA."

"Why CHA."

"For talking to NPCs."

"Have you considered just talking to them normally?"

"I'm a literature student."

"You said that already."

"I'm a literature student, Maddy."

"Okay."

"I have a relationship with language."

"Sure dude."

"Put one in CHA."

"No." They allocated their points. The interface was clunky and required him to think increase STR about fourteen times because there was no slider, because the system was developer-coded by either an LLM or someone who had never used a video game UI in their life. His new sheet: [STR: 12 (+4) | DEX: 16 (+4) | INT: 14 | WIS: 10 (+1) | CHA: 12 (+1) | LCK:???] Maddy put five in STR, five in DEX, three in INT—which was already her highest, of course, two in WIS, none in CHA.

[STR: 11 (+5) | DEX: 15 (+5) | INT: 20 (+3) | WIS: 14 (+2) | CHA: 11 | LCK:???] She had INT 20. He looked at her.

"You have INT twenty."

"Uh. Yeah."

"WHY DO YOU HAVE INT TWENTY."

"It's not that big of a deal."

"It's twenty. It's twice as good as my INT. Almost."

"No. Like thirty percent more."

"Dude."

"Mhm."

"You went up by three in your highest stat."

"What can I say. I'm a thinker."

"FUCK YOU."

"You said it." He stared at her. She was smiling. It was a real smile. Half her face was lit by candle and half was in shadow and she was smiling.

"You're stronger than me now though," she said.

"What? Dude I was always stronger."

"Well. You're at twelve. I'm at eleven."

"So I'm barely stronger."

"Doesn't matter. STR is STR."

"You think?"

"I don't know. Let's find out." She put her elbow on the table. She opened her hand.

"Arm wrestle me."

"Right here?"

"Right here."

"In front of John."

"John doesn't give a shit." He looked at John. John did not give a shit. He put his elbow on the table. He took her hand. Her hand was small, the fingers shorter than his by maybe an inch, and her grip was firm but not aggressive. She was looking at him with a small focused intensity.

"Three. Two. One." He pushed.