One might take the gnome out of the quest, but that did not mean that the world would just put its ending on hold, or so Hugo thought, as he launched a great boulder at the birds who were laughing at him from their bookcases.
The original game had been with pigs laughing at him, but he found that to be a great act of discrimination. So, with the power vested on him by the universe and Kai's mana, he had just tweaked a couple of things in the original program.
He looked at a small yellow bird, which seemed to be sleeping. He aimed his boulder. The pig behind the catapult smiled.
The system restarted, forcing Hugo to miss yet another high score.
He glared and took things in hand. The system activated Lin's new quest mode manually.
Served the git fairy right!
"Well, the program will start up soon," Hugo told himself, as he relaxed in the broom closet, which he had been expanding on for some time now. "And so will the Hamster Apocalypse!"
For if his champion did not want for him to get his kicks in by murdering anime birds, then Hugo was going to get his kicks in by murdering hamsters!
He cackled, Lin frowned.
The ball was set rolling.
0000
As Kai saw the first hamster munching on his cabbage, he simply thought that his neighbor had let loose her hamster on his garden once more.
It was not every day she did so. She did not even do it on purpose.
Lin was looking at the hamster with great concentration. Kai blinked, for he could not hear the tell-tale sound of Hugo flinging debris at raptors.
"Hugo latched at you, didn't he?" Kai asked, for he was ready to speed up the process of suing the system if he had to. Lin was the one for life. Should he end up getting the position as chief "forced" Volunteer, then Kai wouldn't be able to retire, either.
"I don't get it. Why is a hamster party called a horde?" Lin asked more to himself than anyone else.
"Let me show you," Kai pointed at the food forest of the neighbors down the street and sighed. "Do you see the grass over there?"
"What grass?" Lin asked. He saw something that looked like a fur ball, but no grass.
"Precisely! The hamsters are so many that they attack like an orc horde. Soon there won't even be a blade of grass left in the whole village. Man, I hope that my house won't end up collapsing again. Darned hamsters."
"So, new guy," Hugo said, as he looked at his score. Just one perfect shot. Just one… "You have to stop this. Your quest is as follows: go to the dungeon in the old, abandoned shopping mall and stop the hamster generating machine from the old Pet House Shop. You have two days."
"Wait a minute!" Lin began to complain, only to hear cheering. Before he could restart the system again, Hugo logged off.
He deserved a pizza, extra cheese, and a coffee.
But it was enough for him to just get his kicks on the chocolate, which Lin had eaten earlier. For everything, the host ate, could be duplicated.
Hugo grinned, three bars of chocolate in his hand. Ah, he had missed getting sugar highs!
"What did Hugo say?" Kai asked, as he kept observing the hamster horde. They would eat everything there was to eat there. His house was the next target, he just knew it!
"There is a shopping mall which generates hamsters. I don't get it. Who'd want to do something like that?"
Kai sighed. Oh, he hated retelling that story. It sounded so silly that he normally had to just grin and bear it as the person he told it to laughed their asses off.
"Come on, I'll tell you on the way to there," Kai said, stealing his resolve. They began to walk, the hamsters ignoring them. "It all started with the hamster craze."
Lin blinked. Wait, what did that have to do with this? The dungeon who cloned hamsters lived in a different continent!
"Have you heard about Armaros?" Kai asked. If he did not need to explain the inner workings of the strange core, it would be all the better.
"The hamster dungeon… oh," Lin shook his head. The man had created many machines to combat world hunger. They were built from dead dungeon cores and not able to feel the pain of having their mobs slaughtered for meat. "The machine he sent to here was defect, wasn't it?"
Kai nodded.
"Yes, and not only that, but a janitor actually managed to do a full factory reset on it while he was dusting it," Kai looked at the garden before him. He had replanted it more than once, for his neighbor was a single mother who made the best pumpkin pie there was.
He'd get a slice for Lin too, this time. The gnome smiled.
"And now… what? Armaros can feel as the hamsters die, or something?" Lin asked. Kai nodded. "Well… fudge me."
Kai smirked; Lin rolled his eyes.
"There is no way to kill the hamsters, is there?" The fairy knew it was a rhetorical question, but he still had a sliver of hope in his heart, that he could get away from this mess without much trouble.
"No, but we can do something which is just as good!" Kai looked at Lin's pink wings, the necromancer narrowed his eyes. "Can you fly?"
Lin growled. Just because he had wings did not mean that he could fly! He hated it when people assumed it of him!
Just before Lin was prepared to say that no, he could not, for his paper-thin wings could not support his bulk, the flying pig, followed by the persistent wolves, who were locked on target and ignored the humans who tried to get hamsters out of their gardens and to safety, passed by.
Kai's smirk widened. Lin fluttered his wings.
The excuse: "when pigs fly," did not work anymore. Lin took to the sky for the first time in his life, scared out of his wits. Kai jumped up and took a hold of the fairy's leg and began to slowly start him towards the mall.
The flying pig oinked; a hamster threw itself at a wolf.
And so, as the flying pig flew away, the wolves started the process of being nominated as the village's heroes. The villagers were pretty sure that Armaros would never blame them for it.
The flying pig chanced a look behind it and smiled. Good riddance to the wolves, good riddance to the hamsters.
Just as it was about to let out a gloating oink, it slammed into a tree. And so, the flying pig remembered that Karma existed, and if it did not want to end up over a grill, its magic drained from it, it had to be on the side of goodness.
With its mind made, the flying pig continued its journey. Its destination unknown.