The Merchant of Tiqpa: The Bathrobe Knight's Sequel Read online

  “There isn’t any need to do that, guys. You just have to believe me. What would I have to gain from getting our top blacksmith banned?” Anthony suddenly seemed desperate, and it showed as he pleaded with the two Dryads. Rather than defending his case as he might have hoped, it only further painted him as the villain. He probably would have been amused to know that he wasn’t alone in hoping that no one sent a message to Locke.

  “Then a test message won’t hurt anything, will it?” Sol clearly had no intention of backing down.

  “What if they got him banned and are just using this to get you two to turn on the Holy Alliance?” Anthony pointed toward Locke and Eliza.

  “How would they get him banned?” Sal interjected. “Why are you so insistent we don’t check? What are you hiding, Commander?”

  “I’m beginning to think that their story isn’t as farfetched as it originally sounded,” Sol added. “The message couldn’t go through. The account has been banned.”

  “You got Locke banned?” Sal asked in shock. His surprise quickly shifted to outrage which manifested into something physical as he threw his arms up, furious at Anthony. “You greedy little prick, Locke was our friend! He trusted us, and you reported him?”

  “I’m going to kill you,” Sol stated flatly. His anger seemed to be much more tempered, but Locke had a feeling that wasn’t going to last for long. There was pure hatred in his gaze as he leveled his stare on Anthony and unsheathed his weapon.

  “Look, it’s not what you think. He didn’t want to work with us. I had to . . .”

  “What? Ruin his day and end his ability to play games because he didn’t pick your side? Well, now you’ve left me with little choice, too.” Sol replied. The towering Dryad popped his neck and shrugged his shoulders, entering into a combat stance just before Sal put a hand on his back.

  “Easy, brother, let’s not stoop to his level. I say we report this to Lady Portia and let her decide how to handle this situation,” Sal suggested. He was trying to control Sol’s rage and stop him from acting impetuously, even though it was clear from his flushed face that his own ire had not faded one bit. “Let’s not do something rash.”

  “Are you two serious? The enemy is right in front of us!” Anthony gestured at Locke and Eliza again and stamped his foot.

  “Yes, he is.” Sal spit at the ground in Anthony’s direction before turning around. “And now he’s behind us. Come on, men. Let’s get out of here. I’m not fighting that scum’s battles,” Sal said as he left, Sol and the other fighters falling in line behind him.

  This left only Anthony, by himself, to face off against Eliza and Locke.

  “Look, we can talk this through.” Anthony took a step back, edging away from the two as Locke pulled out his blacksmith’s hammer.

  “I never thought I would find someone who managed to make even Shy look brave,” Eliza laughed. She took a small, half-step forward before Locke extended an arm and stopped her. “What? Seriously?” she asked in exasperation. “Don’t tell me you want to let him live too.”

  “No.” Locke shook his head as he lifted up the hammer. “No, I don’t think I do,” he said, not entirely sure what he was doing.

  “Look, is it money? Is it in-game gold? I have plenty! Just let me get out of here, and it’s all yours,” Anthony pleaded. The tables had turned, and he was automatically begging for his life again, just like he had only a short while ago.

  But for some reason, Locke couldn’t hear a thing. He watched Anthony’s lips move, but no words came out and no sounds registered on Locke’s ears.

  “What, what are you doing?” Anthony protested as Locke started walking toward him.

  “You want me to kill him for you?” Eliza asked as she watched a faint smile creep across Locke’s face as he eyed Anthony. “It shouldn’t take more than a moment.”

  Chapter 10

  Locke didn’t respond. He was too zoned out. This isn’t like me, some part of his brain tried to say as if it could reason with the primal half that was getting ready to fight. I don’t do this. I’m a thinker. I’m not a fighter. What am I doing? Let her kill him. His conscience struggled against a more basic instinct, a hunger, and it was losing the battle. No, the other side shot back. No, I have to go back to the boring life of a gold farmer after this. I have to repeat the same action over and over again but for less money. For much less money, thanks to him. I deserve this. I need this.

  “Hey, what the heck are you thinking?” Anthony started backing up faster, eyes glued to Locke, and he didn’t realize he had pinned himself against the side of a building until after he had stumbled into it and his back was pressed against the wall. “Please don’t do this . . .” Anthony drew his own weapon but continued begging as if there were more than a single, inevitable outcome.

  Locke’s weak smile broke into a full grin as he lifted the hammer and swung it in a wide-arcing haymaker at Anthony. To his credit, Anthony responded by moving his own sword in an effort to block the attack, but Locke’s blow was stronger. Instead of stopping the hammer, the momentum from Locke’s swing overpowered Anthony’s lighter weapon and pressed the blade back into his shoulder. The sword cut just deeply enough into Anthony’s armor to catch, and Locke seized the opportunity. He pulled his arms straight up and then came for a downward blow.

  Unable to move his weapon to defend himself from the incoming attack in time, Anthony instead jerked his head to the side and leaned forward fast enough to intercept the incoming blow and counter with one of his own.

  “What? Did you think I was going to be a pushover?” Anthony had grabbed the hammer’s handle and headbutted Locke, sending the merchant staggering backward as he struggled to keep hold of his weapon. “Without your girlfriend, you’re really useless, aren’t you?” Anthony smirked as he wrenched his sword free and swung at Locke, cutting him across the chest.

  Anthony’s attack would have ripped through most leather armor, and if it wasn’t for the incredible sturdiness of Locke’s newly acquired loot, he would have been doomed. His armor held up to the attack, but Locke staggered backward again with the breath knocked out of him.

  “Whatever,” Locke wheezed. He readjusted himself and prepared for another attack. “You’re still going to die here,” he bellowed as he charged in for another round.

  Anthony didn’t bother to block Locke’s attack this time, and he completely ignored the wild swing as he stabbed right into the middle of Locke’s chest.

  Locke was struck hard so that he could have sworn he felt the blow pierce through his body and all the way through to his back. The point had directly struck his sternum, and Locke couldn’t stop himself from doubling over coughing violently as his body tried to figure how to handle the pain.

  Anthony hadn’t come out of the encounter unscathed, though. Locke’s hammer had struck a clean blow to Anthony’s shoulder, and he had been knocked sideways and forced to struggle to keep his balance. Even after weathering the hit, however, he was still standing and in better shape than Locke.

  “Are you done yet?” Anthony laughed as he looked down at Locke. The Alchemist, ill-suited to melee combat, did his best to straighten back up.

  Locke gritted his teeth and clutched his sternum where the blow had been received. “Not just yet,” he growled.

  The problem was, Locke had no idea how to fight, and especially not with a hammer. With a sword, he could swing, stab, parry, and move from one form to another, even if not smoothly. The weight of the hammer, the way it moved . . . most of the attacks just didn’t seem feasible. An experienced user might have been able to pull them off, and an expert might even have been able to use his weapon more nimbly than anyone could ever swing a sword, but Locke wasn’t an expert. He wasn’t even average. He was just very, very familiar with how to send a hammer smashing down on stuff.

  I need to give him the complete opposite of what he expects . . . something that he can’t anticipate . . . Locke rushed forward again, but he didn’t swing his hammer out in an ar
c this time like he had done so many times before as a blacksmith. Instead, he stabbed it out like a sword--as if the weighted head of the hammer had some magical piercing ability--and the abrupt change in tactics seemed to even things up between the two of them. Anthony instinctively raised his sword to parry the blow, and both the sword and the hammer crushed into his chest, knocking him back a few feet.

  “Cute,” Anthony spat out. “Cute, but not enough.”

  The swordsman lunged and thrust his blade toward Locke once more. The movement was so fast that, even though Locke saw the incoming attack and did his best to parry it, his reflexes weren’t nearly quick enough to stop Anthony’s blade. The point of his sword struck Locke dead in the center of his chest for a second time, and Locke felt like he had just been on the receiving end of a karate master’s demonstration.

  Anthony pulled back and swung his blade in an arc before Locke had time to catch his breath, and Locke was forced to duck under the incoming sword, its sharp edge trimming a few strands of loose hair as it whizzed past Locke’s scalp. Without stopping, Anthony pivoted and drew the sword up in a diagonal slash aimed for Locke’s stomach. Locke was forced to stumble backwards as he tried to straighten up, and Anthony followed up with a horizontal slash that Locke barely managed to block. As soon as the sword and hammer collided, Anthony struck out with a swift kick that landed square in Locke’s gut. It was immediately apparent that the swordplay had been a feint and that Anthony had saved his energy for the kick. Locke was sent flying back a good five feet from where he had been standing before he landed on his rear.

  “Without her, you really are nothing,” Anthony jeered, laughing. “I probably shouldn’t keep a pretty lady waiting, though,” he taunted, raising his sword and darting toward Locke quickly, clearly going for a finishing blow.

  Realizing his situation was dire, Locke raised his hand and summoned a white-hot beam of light. The searing ray burned straight through Anthony’s shoulder, incinerating the joint where it attached to his sword arm, and Anthony stopped dead in his tracks and screamed out in agony as soon as the beam touched him. The smoking appendage clattered to the ground in front of Locke, and he quickly scampered forward and grabbed the dismembered limb.

  As soon as he picked it up, an awful idea came into his head. While Anthony was still reeling from the shock of his sudden dismemberment, Locke took Anthony’s arm and proceeded to clock its former owner right across the face. Taking a note from Anthony, he clumsily chained the movement into another reverse swing and hit his humiliated foe from the other direction before kicking him to the ground.

  Anthony struggled to stand back up, a task made much more difficult by the missing arm, and Locke took the opportunity to wallop him a few more times with the severed arm before reluctantly admitting to himself that it just didn’t do enough damage. Locke switched back to his hammer and brought it down on his enemy as forcefully as he could. It wasn’t the same type of strike a warrior would use, but one a blacksmith would use to strike an iron rod and bend it to his will. Steadily and deliberately, again and again, Locke pounded away at Anthony’s skull. It wasn’t until minutes later that Locke came to his senses and realized that Anthony wasn’t fighting back any longer. He stared down at his hammer, covered in blood and gore, and tried to process what had happened.

  “I’m pretty sure he was dead after the second swing,” Eliza commented from somewhere behind him.

  Locke looked up at her through unfocused eyes. She hadn’t moved from where he had left her at the bottom of the stairs, and she didn’t look like she cared whether or not he had just fought a life or death struggle, that he finally had the revenge he had been craving. As far as he could tell, not even a single hair was out place on her head, but then she hadn’t been the one fighting.

  Locke stood up and took a deep breath as he admired his handiwork. Anthony was still dead at his feet with his head smashed like a rotten pumpkin two weeks after Halloween. He imagined that, if he had enough time and an actual ingot to use as the base, he might have been able to fashion the head into something more memorable: Skull Sword of the Pompous Jerk, perhaps. The creation might not even have to be a weapon. He could just make something ornamental, or multiple things, like bone-shaped keyrings.

  “Yeah, he was,” Locke finally admitted, knowing full and well she was right.

  “I’m also pretty sure that you could have just used that skill from the start and saved yourself a lot of trouble.”

  I could have, but then it wouldn’t have felt right. I had to at least try to beat him with my own two hands. Locke’s sense of pride over his victory fell a bit when he remembered how he had relied on that crutch. He had wanted to beat the man to death with his skill, his own effort. Instead, he had used a cheat: a magical power given to him by the game that had nothing to do with ability. But then again, it was a lot better to use the skill and actually win than it was to ignore it and let that stuck-up fool gloat over his corpse instead.

  “You’re right there, too,” Locke answered. He still hadn’t looked up from Anthony’s remains, and he was taking his time to admire his handiwork. You really shouldn’t take pleasure in this, his conscience reminded him. The nagging sensation wouldn’t go away. He knew that it was wrong to feel so jubilant when staring at the body of a man he had just killed, but it didn’t matter. Nothing was going to pierce his smug satisfaction at the moment.

  “And I’m pretty sure I never thought I’d come back to see Shy standing over a dead body and Eliza just standing around watching,” a voice laughed from behind the pair.

  Locke turned around to see Tubal and the rest of the Blue Phoenix Brigade walking toward them. “Didn’t expect to see you all so soon,” Locke admitted honestly. Assuming that they hadn't changed their bind spot, he didn’t think they would have been able to reach them so quickly.

  “Well, we were going to take the scenic route,” Reginald laughed and then nodded his head toward Tubal and Sparky, “but little brother and sister here wouldn’t even let us stop for coffee. On top of that, we had to work real hard and cut a swathe through the enemies at breakneck speed since they were worried we wouldn’t make it back in time to see Eliza here still alive.”

  Eliza, who was now the center of attention thanks to Reginald’s explanation, just stood there, frozen in the most un-Eliza-like fashion. Locke could have sworn that she was actually going to blush, and the only sound that escaped her lips was a small “Uhh . . .”

  “Now that was definitely unexpected,” Reginald chuckled, taking the attention off the suddenly-shy NPC.

  Sampson shook her head at Reginald. “I swear, someone is going to kill you one of these days.”

  “What?” Reginald asked, only to have the back of his head smacked by Bianca. “Wait? I didn’t do any--” Another pop made him shut up for a second before trying again. “I didn’t do anything . . . this time.”

  “We probably owe you a few,” Bianca added. Then she giggled and winked at Locke when she noticed that he was watching her movements intently.

  “As you can see,” Eliza began, “I didn’t need saving. I can handle myself.”

  Her defense was much later than expected, but there was a good possibility that she had just saved Reginald from yet another violent blow to his cranium. It’s a good thing this is only a game. If they hit Reggie that much in real life, he’d never have a chance of finishing his undergrads, much less a shot at being a doctor. Locke felt bad for Reginald, but he still chuckled a bit at his aptitude for attracting punishment.

  “I’m sure you could have,” Tubal told her, and the way he said it lacked all of the condescension a phrase like that is usually accompanied by. “Rather, I see that you did. But we wouldn’t be much of a team if we didn’t come to help either way, would we?”

  Eliza raised one eyebrow just slightly as she studied Tubal for a moment. “You could learn something from them,” Eliza shot at Locke.

  “Well, teamwork is about being ready and willing to do your par
t and to lend a hand where you’re needed. Shy knows that. But maybe I could give him a hand and teach him a few things he might not know yet --” Tubal suddenly stopped mid-sentence as he was cut off by Locke’s laughter.

  “What? What’s so . . . Oh.” Tubal shook his head as he realized why Locke was laughing. Locke had just been leaning over to pick up Anthony’s arm when Tubal had made the hand comment. “Come on,” he asked incredulously. “What are you even going to do with that?”

  Well, I was getting ready to hide it out of habit so that no guards found it . . . but . . . Locke felt stupid for even thinking to do that as he looked around and realized that, even without his skirmish against Anthony, there were plenty of bodies in the town streets. Most of them were White-Wing, but Humans, as well as the other races, were definitely not off the menu. “I thought I might need it?”

  “Yeah, for what? Medical experimentation? Alchemic potions? Dinner?” Reginald threw out a few random suggestions.

  Dinner? That particular one caught Locke’s ear as he looked at the arm. They do say revenge is a dish best served cold. Does that mean I won’t even have to heat this up to enjoy it? He immediately felt shame at the horrible idea but still chuckled. “Well, actually” --Locke tried to think of a joke to explain away the creepiness of laughing to oneself while holding a disembodied limb-- “I was going to take the leg, too. That way I could afford rent.”