"Oh, are you awake mr. kamikadze!?" A mocking voice roused me from my thoughts. — "How are you feeling?"
"That's the queen of sarcasm herself! I must have been a saint in my previous life to earn the attention of such a person?" - I snorted, standing up. — "Or are you so in love with me that you come to see me without the profession need to do so?"
"Only in your dreams, boy." - The brunette who had just entered my tent rolled her green eyes. If I had a definition for this woman, I would call her an "ulcer", but most other men mistakenly refer to her as a "femme fatale" type. - "It's just I couldn't believe it when I heard you came back without a scratch."
Yeah, so true, I didn't get any scratch, at all.
"I'm sorry, but I don't like girls who are five years older than me. But if you ask me with all the tenderness and humility, perhaps I will accept you as a concubine. Since no one asked for your hand in thirty years, it's silly to hope that someone will ask you to marry him in the future."
"You're hitting where it hurts the most, you brute." - the woman grimaced. - "I'm sorry I didn't meet any real men in my TWENTY-EIGHT years of live."
"Typical excuses of individuals who have grown old in solitude."
"Put aside unnecessary conversations. I didn't come here to strengthen my depression." - the woman conceded defeat. - "Tell your little sister, why were you unconscious without a scratch?"
"Why ask so straight? I thought you'd mention the dead and the barely alive B-ranker. Are you losing your grip? You used to torture all the answers out of me."
"Forcing you to drink the antibiotics is not tantamount to torture." - the doctor disagreed.
"What about the time you did a surgery on me without the anesthesia? You know how unpleasant it is to feel someone else's hands in your stomach." - I said.
���Will keep mentioning it until I reach the grave? I saved your life!" - the beautiful woman objected.
"I don't think I'll have to do it for too long – you're an old woman, you'll probably get sick very soon, and that's all, I'll have a new doctor."
And so it went on, while she tried to get the information out of me, and I tried to talk her out of it as best I could. I didn't want to lie to her.
This woman, Rose Cole – is the best doctor in the city hospital, and also a B-rank healer. She is from America, but since the United States is officially recognized as a Magician's State, despite the fact that adventurers and Dungeons also appeared there, the woman had to run away. So she's been living with us for seven years.
The first time I got treated by her was even before the dungeons have become a widespread thing, six years ago. Then, as a sixteen-year-old boy, I managed to fall into a cage with bears at the zoo. Of course, this was accompanied by a long list of accidents, a stolen wallet, a half-hour chase and so on, but the result was that I was lying on the ground waving at the death door with a torn stomach. To my credit, I managed to take a revenge on a bear even when it was eating my leg – I stuck chopsticks right into its eye.
In that very park, she was, then still a twenty-two-year-old beauty, pouring her grief from a broken heart with a mountain of ice cream. I have no idea how she doesn't get fat after such stress jams, but up to this very day her figure always was a top notch.
Well, she saved me then, calling me an idiot and wailing about stupid teens like me. True I was a teen, but a teen that went through a war, I saw a lot of things during the first monster outbreak, and I got a hard scale of cynicism. Therefore, I began to respond showing my fangs. Since then, it has become a habit that we always talk back to each other like this, although other men ready to blow away the dust from her shoes and respect her immensely. Given how often I come here, it's no surprise that our bond has become quite strong.
"So, shall we discharge me?" - I arched a questioning eyebrow.
She looked at me in silence, asking a silent question. I accepted her challenge, returning it.
"Oh, you stupid boy. Why are you not like all other normal human beings, sharing your troubles with people who care about you? No, you have to act like a ram. Okay I…I may not be considered that close to you. But at least talk to Gavril. Or even your sister – she's not an adventurer, but…"
"Don't be silly." - I closed my eyes. – "My sister certainly doesn't need to know about what I'm doing. And I don't have any problems. Everything is great."
Why does everyone always think there's something wrong with me?
"As you wish, Mr. Equanimity." - She sighed, closing the folder in her hands. — "If there's nothing you want to tell me, you can get lost. I have enough worries in this hospital without adding you to it."
I smiled back at her.
I also had a lot of things to do. It's still late in the morning, and some of it can be done today.
Half an hour later I was walking down the street. I'm not particularly delayed at the hospital discharging process. Everyone knows who I am, and all the necessary information is recorded in a separate sheet. And, to be honest, I also know half of the staff by heart, and for some of them I even know their families.
The clothes must have been brought to me by my sister, for they were definitely mine. The old uniform was torn, and it was easy to see that I had been stripped of three limbs there. It's strange that no one asked me about it.
"And I'm walking through the city, walking on the sand. A good day. Great day!" - I hummed a random song. I'm not even sure if there is such a song, but I wasn't particularly worried about it. No, I was starting to panic that everything was too good.
Ahead of me, twenty paces away, two big men were approaching me purposefully. if it hadn't been me, I could have hoped they weren't coming for me, because I had no idea who they were. But I experience similar scenarios every once in a while.
The system confirmed my thoughts.
[+++++++++++++++++++++++++++]
Received a situational quest: beat or be beaten.
Description: they want to beat you up. You don't want to be beaten.
Goal: Defeat two thugs.
Reward: You will be able to interrogate them.
Penalty: You will be beaten.
[+++++++++++++++++++++++++++]
I almost stopped at what I saw. Seriously? And this is the game system? The ability that everyone dreams of? If I beat them, I will be able to interrogate them without it, or I will be beaten by them! It's one of the two anyway.
Still, that's not the main problem. they are two meters tall each and their biceps are the size of my head... No, I'm a cool adventurer, but an E-ranker cannot ignore the laws of physics!
However, this was not the reason for my action. Not at all. Now all my efforts should be directed to comprehend and understand the system. And since there were only two options for the development of events, I preferred to choose the third.
The escape.
I levelled this way before the system had appeared. As one wise man said – a born to run does not know pain ... well, he did not quite say that, but you get the point.
An interesting question – who runs faster, a rather small athletic guy, or two big guys two meters tall each? The answer was simple – within ten seconds I was out of their sight. Moreover, I was quite a bit away from them from the beginning.
I wandered a little longer to throw them completely off my tracks. And just when I seemed to have gotten rid of them, a system message appeared in front of me.
[+++++++++++++++++++++++++++]
Quest "Beat or be beaten" was failed.
Penalty: being beaten.
[+++++++++++++++++++++++++++]
I stared at the window in surprise.
"I ran away, and nothing happened to me. So, it means I can ignore the system's punish... " – not finishing my thoughts, I was disturbed by something very unexpected.
"Magical girl's kick!"
Something hit me sharply in the stomach, and literally drove me into the wall. I'm not sure if the building was damaged, but I definitely heard the crunch of my bones.
and yes, one more discovery – the player's body does not affect the feeling of pain in any way.
"Tremble, villain! Magical girl Alexia has come to teach you a lesson."
I croaked, trying to get up. I can't move. I can't even lift my head to look into the eyes of this crazy "Alexia". – "May you be overtaken by tentacles…"
"What did you say, villain?"
I didn't answer, but I did say a few words in my mind which can't be written due to censorship.
"Alexia, stop." - A new voice rang out. Again a female, but this time it was clear that this one is not a child.
"You did something bad."
"No, sister! Look at him. He's the spitting image of a villain!" - a small ten-year-old girl in a pink robe and holding a pink heart stick pointed at me.
I finally got up... and immediately fell back down. At least my position is now sitting rather than lying down. But it's still damn uncomfortable.
"That's enough. If you persist, I won't let you watch cartoons."
"But..." the younger one whimpered, shifting her hesitant gaze from me to her. "O-okay, I'll leave this Villain for now. But I will definitely prove to the world that you are a Villain and beat you up!" - she said, pointing at me.
"And what did you do just a moment ago? Do you think that to beat someone up you need to kill them!?"
They left, and I just sat there without telling them anything. I remember their faces, and I even know the name of one of them. Now I won't rest until I spank the little one and punish the adult one.
"F*cking adults who don't know how to raise children. Freaking kids are high-ranking adventurers. Wait… does it mean it is the punishment from the system!? The f*cking system with its stupid fine. Totally sucks."