Chương 28: The Hour of the Pig

Will you … 1) Plead, beg, grovel for clemency. It's the sensible and therefore the right thing to do. What use is pride inside a dingy jail cell? Or worse, in an unmarked grave? 2) Call his bluff and wait him out. Don't give him the satisfaction of breaking you, but also don't risk antagonizing him any more than you already have. 3) [Constitution and Wisdom DC 16 (Hard)] No. You're done being this asshole's doormat.

You might not be a true spellcaster, but you're still a person, godsdamnit, and it's time you were treated with some semblance of respect. [Favorable: CON modifier (+5). WIS modifier (+6). The memory of Rudolf compels you (+4). Dad is proud of a son who stands up to bullies (+2).] [Adverse: [Doom Spiral (Lv. 1)] (-1). Mom just wants her boy to come home safe (-2).] There it was. The first combined ability check. Jordan had been wondering when it might crop up.

The combined ability check was a proud homebrew tradition in Vesselia. Granted, Jordan the player normally worked with spells that tapped into and scaled off multiple attributes. But there was no reason why the mechanic couldn't be adapted to a dialogue check. The procedure was simple. Roll as many times as the number of attributes involved. Take the average and round up. To that, add and subtract the favorable and adverse factors, including modifiers from all the affected attributes. Yes.

This last bit was why combined checks often ended up easier than their single counterparts, especially when they pooled two of your best attributes. I mean, it makes sense. You're tapping into multiple aspects of yourself to strengthen your spells. Or, I guess in this case, to know what to say to a bully. There was no need for internal debate. Jordan couldn't think of a reason not to… 3) Let Fuckface Heron know what's what.

Constitution and Wisdom DC 16 First Roll: 1 Second Roll: 6 Average: 4 Final: 18 Result: success Oh, thank fuck. Thank fuck, indeed! If this had been anything but a combined check, rolling a nat 1 would've resulted in an automatic fail. In this case, however, the slightly less disastrous second roll plus all the generous modifiers pulled it up to a narrow success. Which gave Jordan the springboard to launch into…

"Listen, fuckface." Heron gave him a look halfway between frank shock and wry amusement. Apparently, this particular 'dialect' of the Common Speech had yet to make its way to Featherift City.

"You might think it's all fun and games kicking a guy when he's down," Jordan went on, confidence unearned yet undented.

"But you won't be laughing when I'm back up. Because trust me, I don't intend to end my time in Vess—Stormvast—licking the boots of some military grunt, let alone wasting away inside a jail cell. I will crawl out of this hole, with or without your help, and I'll keep crawling and hustling and climbing until I'm the one looking down on you. I've done it before, on multiple seas—occasions. There's no reason I can't do it again." The sneer was back. Colder and more menacing than ever.

"Are you trying to threaten me, Jordan Yu?"

"No, I'm giving you an out. Drop this psycho asshole act. Treat me with the same dignity you would any of your other recruits, such as it might be, and there won't be any problems between us. Otherwise… well, otherwise, I'll never have a reason to respect you either." Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. That was it. The extent of Jordan's combined [Constitution] and [Wisdom].

He could sense the exact moment a weight lifted off his shoulder, followed immediately by a knot forming in the pit of his stomach. How would Heron take it? In a very real sense, the Ranger held absolute power over the prisoner. The man could very easily send his [Fireball] through the bars, enlarge it to its 'traditional' size, and use it to reduce Jordan to his component atoms. The question wasn't could he but would he. Against his duty? His honor? His humanity? Too much paperwork? Waste of mana?

Jordan could name any number of reasons Heron might decline to murder him in cold blood, but they all felt trivial next to the sheer power differential between them. Yet, as Jordan imagined all the impulses and inhibitions wrestling each other inside Heron's mind, he realized he didn't care. They weren't important to him. They weren't the reason he'd rolled the dice on this particular occasion. The only thing that mattered was that he'd fought for his own dignity.

Had stood his ground when the walls pressed in on him. A feeling he'd long since forgotten in the 'real world', rekindled here in the guise of a video game dialogue option. If he should die here—if this should be the end of his brief and brutal playthrough—he could at least hold his head high in his last moments. Heron Catchgrain remained silent for some time, sneer frozen upon his face. Throughout the staring contest, his eyes shifted only once, back up the hallway he'd marched in from.

To check for witnesses and eavesdroppers? Or to glance once more at the Heavenly Cauldron, confiscated and set down next to the guard's station?

"Very well." The Ranger was the first to break the silence, doing so with a slight, dismissive tilt of the chin.

"You've made your point, Jordan Yu, as boorish and inarticulate as it may have been. And I'll allow that you've done your part by dragging yourself to this city, by hook and by crook. I'll do mine by unbarring this last obstacle." A barely perceptible nod back up the hallway. Not a second later, a guard showed up with the keys and opened the cell door. It took Jordan much longer than a second to react. He nearly lost his footing as he stood, made stiff and unwieldy after a whole day of self-reflection.

He inched his way out of the cell with cautious steps, still unsure if he was out of the woods.

"Hey man," he said to Heron as the latter stood to leave. Now that Jordan was a free man again, he went right back to tempering his demands with a bit of sheepish humility.

"Feels kinda weird to ask this after, you know, but uh… you couldn't hook me up with some food and drinks, could you?" Heron sneered with obvious glee.

"Until you report to the city barracks, you're a free denizen of Stormvast. As such, you'll have to find your own way, I'm afraid. Oh, and that also goes for traveling with your oversized Vessel. May Zhurong give you strength, Jordan Yu." The man turned and exited stage left, leaving Jordan to reckon with his new predicament. He turned to the guard, who wouldn't meet his eyes. He looked to his cauldron, standing proud in all its 500-pound glory. He heaved the heaviest sigh in living memory.

The rest of the night was a blur. A mad dash to get to the city barracks before the next bell. Only it wasn't a dash, given how he had to roll his 500-pound cauldron on an empty stomach. And it wasn't mad, either, given how often he had to stop and ask directions from a patrolling city guard. The saving grace was that the jail happened to be fairly close to his destination.

And as soon as Jordan caught sight of a likely-looking gate—ceramic roof tiles and stone frame, lit on either side by hanging lanterns—he did upgrade his hesitant stumble into a mad rush, pushing the cauldron harder and faster than ever. By the end of his 'sprint', the cauldron had picked up some real speed. So much so that Jordan lost control of it! And that was how Gatekeeper Jordan Yu barged through the gate to the city barracks, his Vessel rolling ahead of him while he himself tumbled face-first into the dirt.'

Ggooonngg…!!' Jordan's heart went to his throat. He thought the city bell had sounded, and he wasn't sure if it'd done so before or after he made it past the gate. Relief washed over him as he looked up from a prone position. For there his cauldron was, having come to a stop after crashing into the nearest structure: a sentry post manned by a rather irritated-looking young man. The sound had come from the cauldron! It was still the hour of the Dog, and Jordan was—' Ggooonngg…!!'

Well, there was that city bell now, marking the changeover to the hour of the Pig and the start of curfew. In any case, Jordan was safe. Handed in his assignment seconds before the deadline—a closer shave than anything he'd ever tempted as a goody-two-shoes Earthling. And it'd taken everything out of him. He lay on his stomach a while longer, quite literally incapable of moving a muscle. That was, until he caught a whiff of hot food, and found that his muscles had a few contractions left in them after all.

Jordan looked up to find the sentry standing over him. In the young man's hands were a gourd for drinking as well as a bamboo steamer—the kind often seen in the Dim Sum places back home.

"From Ranger Catchgrain," the man said gruffly, sounding utterly mystified as to why this dirty stinking floundering stranger should be deserving of such kindness.

"Said to give it to you if you made it past the gate before the bell." The rest of the night was a blur. A mad scramble to stuff his face without choking to death. The liquor burned and nourished his parched throat in equal measure. The meat buns were simple in taste and a little too greasy, which made them all the more suited to the job of reviving Jordan Yu in full. In the midst of all this pigging out, Jordan received a system notification.

The universe's way of acknowledging his dignity, earned in the only way he knew how. New Feat unlocked. [That Dawg In You]: You wish to defend your territory in this dog-eat-dog world? Then you better hope that your bark is as menacing as their bites are vicious. Gain proficiency (+2) in ability checks against all combat classes.