Lieforged Gale

When Noah and I looted and inspected the goblin bandit camp, we were left with more questions than answers. My earlier hunch about the goblins using the obsidian shards in their weaponry had been correct, but none of it was there anymore. The obsidian had been removed from everything, whatever the goblins had used it for—blades, arrowheads, all that—was left were shafts and handles.

Their old weapons were stacked in a storage tent like cordwood, completely forgotten. We looted everything, of course, coming out with more than enough for me to get a small storage warehouse.

We left the dungeon with smiles on our faces, despite the strange boss fight at the end. As for that weirdly angry unseelie boss, it was pretty obvious that he'd been some sort of event thing. Anything else didn’t make sense with how hard he had been to fight and how he’d just left at an arbitrary time.

“Can we do this again?” Noah asked, giving me a hopeful look. “It was really fun. I mean, apart from that misogynistic caricature of an evil villain.”

“Yeah, tell me about it. He was weirdly focused on the whole sex for money thing, wasn’t he?” Wait! This was my chance. My time to ask that favour. “Yes, but… can you help me with a really mundane quest? There’s a cool passive in it for you.”

I shared the quest with him, hoping the Diminutive Deadlifting perk would be part of the rewards for him if he helped me.

“You want… bricks?” he asked, blinking at the notification he just got. “Why?”

“I learned a rare metalworking profession and I want to build myself a little forge,” I explained. “It’s called Spirit Forging and it needs a different set of facilities and tools compared to normal.”

“Could you make me some armour?” he blurted excitedly. “I’ll help with the bricks, that passive would be useful, but… Awesome Keiko-made armour? That would be so sick.”

I smiled, and on a whim, I bopped his bicep with one of my tiny fists, just like I would have done back in the day with Ethan. "Sure thing. Shall we go sell the loot and find a place to stash the bricks? I can probably only afford a large shed, but it'll be enough.”

“Reminds me of my apartment outside of VR,” he said with a wry little chuckle.

I returned a smile, but inwardly I felt that same sense of loss that always came when people remarked on their outside lives. I used to have one too, but now I was stuck in a medical pod—Artificial intestines providing my blood with digested nutrient paste from the feeder hose.

Mentally, I shook myself and curved my thoughts back into the here-and-now.

Something about Noah's reaction to the Unseelie fae’s likening of him to a woman made me uneasy. I mean yeah, sure, the asshole's attitude towards women was objectively garbage, but if I had to guess, there was more to it with Noah. Most guys would just get angry, whereas he'd flinched like it was a bullet flying past his ear. Whatever the reaction meant, treating him like a bro seemed like the right thing to do.

As we were leaving the area, we passed Noah's previous group. To my disappointment, it looked like they'd cleared the dungeon too.

Almost like he'd sensed me watching, the misogytank looked up and met my stare. "Hey, it's the chosen ones," he grinned, making it clear his choice of words was an insult. "Giving up? Little miss femboy over here couldn't take a hit? Shit, doesn't even look like he took a hit. It is ‘he’, right? ‘Cause like, it's hard to tell with you fairies." 

Beside me, Noah stiffened. I, on the other hand, took a deep breath to keep my anger in check. This single brain-celled organism was the gift that kept on giving.

“We cleared the dungeon with just two people,” I replied, my expression frosty as ice. “Not only that, but we had to fight an event boss in place of the normal goblin bandit chief. Look on the Recent Clears list if you want proof.”

A few frowns of mild concern flitted across the other party’s faces.

“As for Noah’s masculinity… first off, it's genuinely weird that you give a fuck, and second, I watched this dude stop a very angry Unseelie fae in its tracks with nothing but a thin shield of magic,” I continued, my voice becoming more heated as I spoke. “So, I'd say it took balls of steel to do that in nothing but rags, while I imagine you hid inside your shell of metal like a tortoise.”

Noah twitched again, but I squeezed him to keep him quiet while we started walking again.

It took the misogytank a while to think of something to say, but before he could, I looked up at him and added, "You know what you remind me of? You remind me of… what is it, fuck…”

Briefly, the words I needed fled into the mists of my mind, and I felt a split second of panic. Then, they came back, “That’s it, you're one of those background filler characters in anime. The ones where they aren't even important enough to animate. You're a blank faced dude in boring metal armour who was drawn by some unpaid intern. You're… You're generic, and it's pretty fucking sad.”

He scoffed loudly and puffed up like the angry blustering idiot that he was, but I didn't give him a chance to respond—I carefully steered Noah around another group of players, then out of the dungeon hub and towards the market.

The moment they were out of sight, I blew a tense breath through clenched teeth and gave my new friend an apologetic smile. "Sorry. It was irritating me how he was insulting your masculinity."

Noah just stared at me for several heartbeats, a look of adorable confusion and gratitude on his face. "That was… wow. That was hot, like scary hot. Not that… I mean, I'm not really into girls, and…  I tried to make that clear, in case— Nevermind, that was just, cool, you know? Talking about how I did cool tanking stuff, balls of steel stuff—"

Laughing gently, I shushed him. "You're welcome—And no, don't worry. You're very pretty, but I'm gay too. I think. It's complicated. I'm into girls, let's say that."

"I'm more like eighty to twenty," he shrugged, smiling sheepishly at me. "Girls are… sometimes there's one or two I glance twice at, but all guys make me drool."

"Even him?" I teased, nodding back towards the dungeon hub where misogytank was, while giving Noah a cheeky grin.

He laughed. "Okay, not him. Actually… if he had a personality transplant, or I could just…"

"Ew, ew, no," I grimaced, faking an overactive gag reflex.

"What?" Noah asked, feigning innocence. "I just like the idea of teaching toxic men about the male G spot. Maybe he'd be down for it if I wore a cute little dancer outfit…"

“Jesus,” I groaned, rolling my eyes. This boy was thirsty as hell.

Noah’s grin was the smuggest thing I’d seen in my entire life. “Yeah, him too. Don’t you know Jesus was a bottom?”

“Let’s just go and move some rocks,” I muttered. Thirsty gay boys would be the death of me, I swear.

 

The dungeon gave me another level, putting me at level twenty two. With my stat points, I continued to increase my Focus with one point, then placed the next into Stamina. I was a little disappointed to see no new ability unlocks, but I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised. The game would want me to get comfortable with my current build and playstyle, before I got to twenty five and I was thrown into the class evolution.

As for the basalt stone, it took Noah and I the rest of the day to transfer all of it to a dimensional warehouse, and every single minute of that task sucked. It was back breaking work, made almost comical by the fact that we did it while in our tiny forms—The strength buff was just too good not to use.

Then, when we finished, we were given that Diminutive Deadlifting perk. It gave us two extra Strength, but it was the kind of Strength that the game considered you gained by working out. That meant that both of us were rolling around with a smidge more muscle definition than we used to have. 

Muscle definition that Elena appreciated once she got me naked that night.

“I like this,” she whispered, tracing a finger down my soft, flowing abdominals.

Blushing, I leaned my head on her shoulder and burrowed into her neck to hide my face. “I like it too.”

“My god,” she laughed, slipping her hand further down. “You are so precious.”

I gasped as her fingers slid easily between my legs. She played with me for a few seconds, enjoying the way I shuddered as my overstimulated nerves sent shockwaves of sensation throughout my body.

“I’ve been trying, you know,” she continued, allowing her hand to grow still. “To fall for you. To feel anything besides warm friendship and lust.”

“Has it worked?” I asked, shifting so I could look into her eyes.

She gave a sad smile. “No. It hasn’t. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. This isn’t the first time it’s happened, either. I had a girlfriend who loved me and I tried so hard to fall in love with her. It just didn’t happen.”

“You can’t force love, Elena,” I murmured gently. “It either happens or it doesn’t.”

“Who the hell will I fall for then?” she grumbled, pulling me tight. “You’re so lovely, if it isn’t you, then who?”

Leaning forward, I pressed a kiss to her cheek and said, “We’ll see. It doesn’t mean you need someone like that to be happy, though. Assuming I don’t fuck up our friendship, I’ll do my best to give you all the cuddles and ‘affection’ you need.”

“What happens when you find a girlfriend?” she asked, her expression falling.

“Then she’ll have to be okay with that arrangement,” I told her.

My only experience with love had been rather disastrous anyway. Friends were where it was really at. That thought promptly caught on my mental tongue as I remembered what had happened recently with my friends—with Marlon. God damn it.

“If you say so,” she sighed. “I wonder if that would be enough, in the long run.”

I didn’t have a reply for her, so I made a noncommittal noise and shifted into a more comfortable position. I was dead tired, and if I was going to get right into building my forge tomorrow, I’d need all the rest I could get. Like, I didn’t even know how to make a forge. Youtube would teach me, though. Hopefully.

“In other news, I’m glad you found us a tank,” Elena said, interrupting my feeble attempt to sleep. “He sounds like a handful, but in a cool way.”

“Yeah, he really really is,” I giggled softly. “His class is so fucking cool, too.”

Playing with my abs again, she grumbled, “I’m really jealous of you all for that, by the way. You, your friend Paisley, and Noah are all running around with rare, badass shit, and I’m over here as a default rogue.”

“We’ll find you something cool, trust,” I yawned, patting her shoulder. “This new expansion is bound to have something interesting you can spec into. I have a feeling it will be fairy themed, too. All these fairy classes and that asshole we fought, it’s kinda hard to miss.”

“You think so? How does that even work? The specialising, the evolution, whatever,” she asked.

God, I was so tired. Why did her brain have to be anxiety central tonight of all nights? “You get some choices by default at 25, or you can find an expert NPC and convince them to train you. It’s not too difficult, just do a few quests for them and increase your rep.”

“Will you help me?” Elena asked, moving her hand to my braid, where she worked her fingers into the heavy twist of hair. Damn, but she was a very tactile person.

“If you promise not to undo my braid,” I laughed tiredly, sinking a fang gently into the soft skin of her shoulder. “It takes me forever to get it right.”

She chuckled along with me. “Sorry. I’ll stop keeping you awake, too. Those yawns are getting to me.”

“Good.”