Drink Drink Drink

Just as the last drop of that fiery dwarven concoction slid down Kurdran's gullet, a voice, slick as an oiled gear, manifested directly in Duke's mind. It was the System AI, sounding far too chipper for the gravity of the situation. "Dear host," it chirped, "do you fancy drinking like a fish without ever hitting the bottom of the barrel?"

"Don't be a wise guy!" Duke mentally snapped back, his eyes still fixed on the triumphant dwarf king. "Spit it out! Any physical way to pull this off?"

"Indeed!" the AI practically purred. "I can stimulate the accelerated growth of alcohol-detoxifying enzymes in your host body, making it significantly harder for you to succumb to inebriation. We're talking an increase in your alcohol tolerance by up to five thousand percent, mind you. However, this comes at the steep cost of a temporary, but significant, drain on your physical fitness..."

"Enough talk! Just do it!" Duke roared internally, his desperation outweighing any concern for future push-ups.

Less than three seconds after Kurdran finished his triumphant chug, Duke, with a newfound bravado that would have made a seasoned pirate blush, gulped down the massive cup. He didn't just drink it; he inhaled it.

"Come on! Who's afraid of who?!" Duke bellowed, slamming the empty tankard upside down on the table. Only a few pathetic drops of wine splattered onto the polished wood, a testament to his seemingly bottomless gullet.

For a moment, the entire throne room erupted in a cacophony of gasps, murmurs, and dropped tankards. Was Duke a wolf in sheep's clothing, a hidden master of the brew? Or was this just a reckless, drunken stunt, and his true colors were about to be revealed in a glorious, vomit-splattered fashion?

Miss Ilucia Barov, usually the picture of serene composure, stared at the colossal wine barrel with a look of utter bewilderment, as if the very aroma of the potent brew was tempting her to abandon all decorum. With a delicate, almost involuntary wave of her hand, a dwarf waitress, sensing the unspoken command, scurried to refill the king's glass.

Ilucia, curious, took a small, tentative sip from her own cup. It was sweet, cloyingly so, at first. But barely a minute later, the tyrannical grip of the alcohol clamped down, a warm, insidious current rising from her stomach, surging through her chest, and rushing straight to her forehead with the force of a battering ram.

"Oh, by the Light!" Ilucia gasped, clutching the table for support, her knees threatening to buckle. "What in the blazes is this concoction?!"

Over on the opposite side of the table, Kurdran's triumphant grin curdled into a scowl. He'd nearly choked himself trying to impress the human, and Duke hadn't even swayed! You, you pretty boy! You can drink like that?! Then why in the name of all that's dwarven did you put on that pathetic act earlier?!

"I just don't cotton to you humans and your fancy footwork!" Kurdran roared, slamming his refilled tankard down. "If I don't drink you under the table today, I'm no Wildhammer! Come on, let's drink till the cows come home!"

A barrel of wine, even a "small" dwarven barrel, was at least ten liters. Yet, these two titans of the tankard, Kurdran and Duke, emptied it with alarming speed, the liquid vanishing as if into a bottomless pit. Kurdran, of course, was a natural-born drinking machine, a legend in his own right. But Duke? Duke was equally unfathomable, a mystery wrapped in a wizard's robe, doused in alcohol.

Most of the poor souls who had dared to join them in this ill-fated drinking contest were already staggering, their faces green, their eyes glazed over. The few who hadn't yet "died at the table" were swaying like trees in a hurricane, their words slurring into an incomprehensible gibberish.

But the two main combatants, locked in their epic struggle in the center of the room, just kept swaying, weaving, and refusing to hit the deck.

"Hey, little Duke," Kurdran slurred, wiping a stream of wine from his beard, accidentally smearing it onto his eyebrow. "Don't you think we're never gonna get through this at this rate?"

"Well, old man Kurdran," Duke replied, surprisingly composed, elegantly dabbing his mouth with a napkin, then poking his nose with a finger. "How about we kick it up a notch? How about we start mixing drinks?"

"That's the inevitable second stage, boy, hardly exciting at all," Kurdran scoffed, waving a dismissive hand. "Bring me all the models from my military map! And my personal treasures!"

Soon, a small army of intricately crafted griffin knight models, each a miniature masterpiece, was carefully placed on the table, alongside a few gleaming gold nuggets and what looked suspiciously like a very old, very dented dwarven beer mug.

"From now on," Kurdran declared, his voice regaining some of its booming authority, "every time a round passes, I'll commit an extra team of eight griffin knights to your cause. In return, you'll supply me with ten more barrels of this glorious nectar!"

"No problem!" Duke shot back, perhaps a little too quickly.

"I haven't... finished yet," Kurdran interrupted, a wicked glint in his eye. "From now on, we're mixing drinks. Each round must be different from the last. And we're playing with the dice."

"What dice?" Duke asked, a flicker of unease in his stomach. That flicker turned into a full-blown inferno of dread when a dwarf servant, grunting with effort, brought forth a fist-sized dice carved from what looked like solid granite. Duke burst out laughing, a high-pitched, slightly hysterical sound. Good grief, is this a universal constant for alcoholics in every world?!

He saw that each side of the monstrous dice bore a different, terrifying inscription: "as much as you want," "one cup," "two cups," and, of course, the most horrifying of all, "clear the table."

Now, there were at least twenty different kinds of wine, ale, and spirits lined up on the table, a liquid rainbow of impending doom. At that moment, Duke's heart sank to his boots, and a cold sweat broke out on his brow.

The alcohol detoxification enzyme increased by five thousand percent. That sounded like a godsend on paper. But if you were a featherweight to begin with, five thousand percent of next to nothing was still... well, not a whole lot. Fifty times zero was still zero, and fifty times five was only two hundred and fifty. A single "clear the table" roll could send him straight to the Shadowlands.

"Here's the kicker, boy," Kurdran explained, his voice thick with malicious glee. "You can only drink one drink per round to break even. But to earn your roll, you have to drink another different drink first. The drink rolled on the dice is what your opponent has to drink. And your opponent can only start his turn after he's finished his drink."

Duke didn't want to know anything else. At this moment, he just wanted to pick up a magical sending stone, or maybe bribe a gnome engineer to invent a phone, and call Lothar. If he died of alcohol poisoning, would it count as an industrial injury? Would his next-of-kin get a pension?

The brutal, liver-shattering decisive battle began.

Duke attacked first, his face grim. After downing two cups himself, the dice landed on "as you go" for Kurdran. The shameless King of the Wildhammers, ever the cheat, took only a minuscule sip, clearly trying to game the system. Wasting opportunities had consequences. Kurdran, now on the offensive, hit Duke with a brutal "five cups."

Seeing the writing on the wall, Duke decisively cheated, letting the System AI take control of his muscles, guiding his hand to throw a "clear the table" with surgical precision, aiming to deliver a knockout blow to Kurdran. A life full of cheats needs no explanation, he thought, a desperate, dark humor bubbling up.

But Kurdran didn't fall! He hadn't fallen yet! After the table was hastily refilled with a fresh array of potent potables, the dwarf king shamelessly and mercilessly returned the favor, slamming another "clear the table" back at Duke.

Duke was sunk... just a hair's breadth from oblivion. He managed to cling to consciousness, a System AI prompt flashing in his mind: "You are only 1% away from being completely drunk. Commencing emergency cheat protocol." He continued to cheat, desperation fueling his every move, and managed to land another "clear the table" in return.

This time, the wine table devil, Kurdran Wildhammer, finally showed signs of cracking. He almost used up every ounce of his legendary strength to deliver one last, crushing "glass" to Duke.

At this moment, Edmund Duke, the league's newly crowned drinking table head coach, drank the final glass with the most tragic expression imaginable, then toppled over like a felled tree.

The winner had been decided?

No!

Amidst the roaring cheers of the Wildhammer dwarves, Kurdran, swaying like a drunken sailor, raised his glass high, but he couldn't get a single drop to his lips. At that moment, Kurdran seemed to be possessed by the very spirit of dwarven revelry, and he began to sing a majestic and lonely song, his voice surprisingly clear despite the gallons of alcohol.

"This body is forged from the bones of wine!" "My blood, it flows with vintage, my heart, a mighty wine jar!" "He has conquered countless taverns, never once losing his stride." "Never retreated, never once hid from the fight." "I have never found a true drinking companion, a soul to match my might." "I often stand alone atop an empty wine barrel, drunk in the victory of loneliness." "However, all that remains is the echoing void." "This body, it is destined to live for wine, and to fight for drinking buddies!"

After his impromptu, boozy aria, the wine glass in his hand slipped, falling to the ground with a resounding CLANG! "I declare that from now on, Duke is my brother!" he slurred, then, with a final, triumphant groan, the wine table devil, Kurdran Wildhammer... collapsed.

He hit the floor with a mighty thud, followed by snores that could rival a griffin's roar.

Surprisingly, there was no clear winner! Kurdran, a dwarf who could single-handedly drink an entire army under the table, had actually fought to a draw with the young human wizard, Duke.

It was a foregone conclusion: Duke's fame would spread throughout Aerie Peak Mountain overnight. Yes, that's right! Duke had led his army to save Aerie Peak Mountain, and perhaps his name wasn't yet on every tongue for that. But Duke had defeated Kurdran at the wine table, and for that, Duke's name was destined to resound throughout the entire dwarf world, whispered in every tavern, sung in every hall.

The dwarves' worldview was truly a strange and wonderful thing: only those who were the best at fighting and the best at drinking could truly become legends.

As the last of the revelers succumbed to the potent brew, it was discovered that not a single soul remained standing at either the guest or host tables. The recovery teams from both sides, looking remarkably sober, emerged to clean up the battlefield and gather their respective "casualties."

A formidable dwarf woman, who looked suspiciously like Kurdran's wife, marched over, heaved the unconscious king onto a cart with the ease of someone taking out the trash, and trundled him away. Vanessa, with a sigh that was almost a groan, dragged Duke away by his legs like a dead dog, leaving a faint trail of wizard robe in her wake.