School's Out

"-and then I got the Asshole class, dude. How was I supposed to know there was somebody in there? I was just trying to fucking survive. You're a good man Alex; ~Hey ho and up she rises, hey ho and up she rises; Chimo! Hey, Chimo, can you play Freebird?" the man in front of me said, turning around and taking his glass with him and moved back to the main part of the party. "Are we letting them get too drunk?" Artemis said. "It's supposed to be safe here and it's not like they were doing anything useful before," I said. "Some of them won't be doing anything useful tomorrow either, if this keeps up," Artemis said. "Maybe. But look at them. They've been tense for nearly a full day, it's nice to see them chill out a little," I said. "Just make sure nobody gets the idea to go to a danger room in this state. Not even the more sober ones," Artemis said. "You want a drink?" I said. "I don't really drink drink. Doesn't mix well with some of my medicine," Artemis said. "Do you have any healing abilities? I'm pretty sure my tinnitus is gone, maybe you don't need to worry about it," I said. "Yeah, no, I don't know. I have an ability, but I'm not sure it'd help with this. Anyways, it's rude to push drinks on people," she said. "Hey, Alex, push one on me," a man in a business suit, Mr. Lin, I think it was, came up to me. He knew how to put them away, and I made him another sour. "How's your wife?" I said. "Passed out, she cannot hold her liquor. And we haven't slept in a day either, woo!" he said and raised his drink above his head.

There was music. Sort of. We had a guitar, and one guy- Chimo- who could play it. Kind of. There was a little bit too much Wonderwall and Smoke on the Water for my taste, but it felt good to hear any kind of music. None of our smartphones had come with us, though some people did have headphones and wireless speakers, they just didn't have anything to connect to. And Chimo had his beginner friendly Yamaha guitar, and there was this girl who insisted that she could play the bongos, but was mostly just slapping a table with some sort of an avant-garde rhythm.

The lights were too bright, the conversation was loud and stuttering, some people had drunk too much, others had only just started and were trying to calm the drunk ones down or get them to sleep. It was, in effect, beautiful.

"Hey boss, get me something strong and hold the fruit," Chum said as he scampered up a chair to have his face reach above the table. "Sure thing, Chum, enjoying yourself?" I said. "Eh, I'll enjoy myself when I'm drinking. I'd say pouring alcohol into these people is a terrible idea, if I thought they had any chance of living long past tonight, so what the hell. Give 'em a good last one," he said. "They'll be fine," Artemis said. I poured Chum a double of bourbon. It seemed obvious to me. "They won't. Well, some of them might get their gloom kicked out of them here, get a little spirit back into them. But they're behind. Whatever happens next will rip them apart," Chum said. "What do you mean whatever happens next? We just have to survive for, what, fifty more hours," I said. "Yeah, maybe. If that's right, then what you have to worry about is what comes after. This is supposed to be fucking onboarding, a tutorial you get me? I've got no idea what's coming for you. I bet anyone under level 15 will be fucked though," Chum said. "So Hannah got to 9 within 20 hours, Alex is six, which is ahead of time, and I'm, uh, fine," Artemis said. "What level are you anyways?" I said. "Shit, this isn't a competition," Artemis said. "But you are winning, ain't ya?" Chum said. "Twelve. But most of my abilities are about administrative tasks and quests and experience. I only have a couple of fighting abilities and I haven't tried them out," Artemis said. "Twelve attribute points, two capacity increases. If you've been putting them in the right places you could probably tank most of the horrors here with your fists," Chum said. "I maxed out my Knowledge to 4 first, then filled in as much of the physical stuff as I could. I feel good, but shit, I don't even know if I'd freeze in a fight," Artemis said. "If you put points into willpower and intensity you won't," Chum said. "It's not about me. My point is that if we got this far in a day, the rest of them can get there in two. And they can get better abilities, or even spells like Alex," Artemis said. "That's weird though, I haven't seen anyone else cast a spell. I have, like, seven at this point, so am I just lucky, or are others just not trying?" I said. "Most people aren't going into danger rooms. And we haven't found any more libraries," Artemis said. "I got my first spell in my starting classroom," I said. "Yeah, I've seen, I think two of those? Seemed pretty useless," Artemis said. "Mine saved my life," I said.

The din of conversation was getting a bit too loud. Shit, somebody was arguing. The man in a black band t-shirt and pants, long, curly black hair and beard, pierced ears was raising his voice. A close-shaved, solid looking man in a hoodie was talking him down.

"What I'm saying is, we've wasted nearly the whole day and we're fucked if we don't do anything. Jaquis and fucking Siegfried didn't come back and they were badasses, we gotta go together and find some fucking monsters to kill," the first man said.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it. "And what I'm saying is that you're drunk, Zack. Not wrong, drunk. I wouldn't let you drive, and I'm not letting you swing a bat around," the other said. "Fucking viking berserkers went into battle shitfaced. Maybe that's my class, I'll get a berserker class, we can all get cool classes like that," Zack said. "You can go get yourself a glass of water, and then if you still want to go out, you can go after 20 minutes," the other man said. "Nobody is going anywhere until they sober up," Artemis said. "Who elected you queen of the Tower?" he said. "Look, we're just trying to relax, man. After a little rest we can go out and face the world," I said. "Fuck that, I'm going now, who's in my party?" he said.

Nobody did, but nobody stopped him when he pushed himself out of the door. You cannot save people against their will, or that is what I kept telling myself. The mood was quite ruined by this conflict, and the more sober people got quiet and the drunker ones began falling asleep in their own seats.

"Shit, maybe I should go," I said. "Absolutely not," Artemis said, "First of all, every reason that applies to him not going applies to you too. Second of all, you're not his dad, and if something happens we need you."

And I could not really argue about it. Hannah had been standing more or less still for the duration of the party. She couldn't really eat or drink, or be merry, so she was just enjoying the ambiance all the way up to until the ambiance went sour. Now she sat down near my station by the fridge, and we chatted a while. She also wanted to go after the weird metalhead guy, but that was dumb. We didn't even know the guy, and while the Tower did seem to appreciate dashing heroics, it seemed to appreciate murdering the hell out of us more. So we spoke to the gathered people in the room, and told them to rest, get some sleep, and that we would come up with a plan to make leveling up easier for everybody afterwards.

Artemis was absolutely down to move the guildhall here. We still hadn't seen how it would keep us safe from monsters, especially some of the intelligent ones, but at the very least the space was better suited to accommodating large groups of people. Which meant that we would have to go back to the original guild to get the rest of the stuff and whatever people we could convince to join us. I was tired, but I had also slept not that long ago, I could easily keep going, and we were a little bit to the 'east' compared to the original guildhall. We weren't quite far enough for the reduction in the number of hallways and the density of the danger rooms to become obvious, but this was a better place to explore the Tower from.

There was only one problem- I didn't want to start exploring the Tower until after I had reached level 10 and defeated the spike gremlin (or died trying). With every other horror of the Tower that I'd faced the gremlin seemed relatively less terrifying, but I still didn't see myself killing it with my icicle spell which was, honestly, much more effective in making drinks than it was at killing monsters. It did work for that too, eventually, but it seemed a lot weaker than any weapon that any of the active adventurers had been using.

"Hey, Hannah?" I said. "What?" she said. "Wanna help me out with a personal quest?" I said. "Sure. Does that mean you have an idea about what we should be doing?" she said. "It really is sort of just for me. I need to go back to the danger cafeteria before I reach level 10. Ideally I should reach it in there," I said, "before that I want to grind out some levels, and after that I am happy to give you a turn choosing what we should do." "Eesh. I heard about the danger cafeteria. Every now and again somebody would go out to check it and not come back," she said. "Yeah it's a fucking nightmare. But with a few more levels and your help, I think maybe we can do it. Especially if I get a few more spells, maybe something stronger offensively than my damn icicles," I said. "And how do you propose we get levels?" she said. "The title stuff is a trap. It'd take forever to get to a higher level doing helpful and undead things, which, I don't even want to know," I said. "Me either. So, murdering monsters? Where? Every danger room you've gone into has been Vietnam flashback nightmare fuckfest," she said. "Yeah. It isn't going to be easy. But maybe we can be even more careful. I don't know, whatever we end up doing it's going to be safer together. There aren't a lot of other people worth anything in a fight. Hell, I'm barely better than nothing," I said. "Stop putting yourself down. I don't know; of course I will help you with your quest. Your ideas about between now and then are lacking," she said. "Well, I just had the thought. Lets get a little more rest, then we can get Artemis to the old guild safely," I said.

There was the same countdown in this room as in all of the classrooms now, except instead of a magic chalk writing on a blackboard, it was on a large digital clock above the exit. 50:00:00 became 49:59:59 and I realized we had been in here for nearly a full day. It felt like so much longer, and at the same time it felt like time was running out. Two more hours until a third of the challenge was done.

"Hey, Hannah, Artemis, either of you ever play a tabletop rpg?" I said. They had, and there were a few simple enough that I could remember the rules by heart. So I had my friends make characters, and we played a game set back on Earth. Hannah played a star athlete turned vampire hunter, and Artemis played a rockstar. I told the dumbest story that I could possibly think of. It was amazing.

Before I noticed, the clock struck 48:00:00. Everybody jumped out of their seats when the school bell rang out through the hallways, louder than anything any of us had heard in 24 hours.

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