Chapter 15: The Workaholic

Dimitri was yet to wake up from his stink-induced nap. Nikola was giddy.

He had played MMOs until recently. Then he had decided one day that the quests were all the same. That there wasn't even a single original MMO left.

Besides, he didn't like the fact that the male characters were dressed from head to toe in armor and the female ones wore bikini.

He would have liked it in the reverse, thank you very much.

There were stats. There were quests. Nikola was reading through the Walkthroughs.

Those files most people didn't bother opening. After all, where was the fun in trying to play a game perfectly? There was beauty in chaos.

And even if he was just Tangra's desperate Sim, he still thought that he could get something out of life.

Nikola went outside and began to collect the leaves from the front porch.

According to a quest, if he burned them all and sprinkled the ash over the lake before midnight, he would be able to summon another Selkie.

"I am not doing this for the meat," he lied to himself shamelessly. "I am just trying to purify this lake!"

The Wendigo had tasted like an old goat. But the Selkie had been as tasty as a true horse.

Nikola had already marinated his squash. Now he only needed meat to go with it!

Before he could finish with the leaves, however, he saw that someone had put up a tent on the other side of the lake.

He furrowed his brows. Pretty sure that this was a private property.

But the fact that there could be a mortal in here. One, who could find out what Nikola was doing, made him collect the leaves in a more subdued fashion.

When he was done, he lit the leaf pile. There was no light coming from the tent.

But there was mana coming off it.

Nikola had no idea who was there, but this person was a lot like Dimitri.

Without the rot in the mana, that was.

The brunette thought about going there and confronting the man or woman, but then the Selkie stepped out of the water.

Nikola smiled, raised his staff.

Only for it to let out some sparkles and then sizzle out. No longer even glowing.

The Selkie patted the earth with its hoof.

Nikola took off running.

The Selkie took off running after him.

The System was not making it any easier.

"If you have exercised instead of trying to read the whole Walkthrough," it snarked, as Nikola was circling his tree and hoping for a miracle. "Then you wouldn't be in this situation!"

Nikola could not agree more. And he pledged to go for a jog and to hike every day, should he survive.

Kind of like people promise they will go to church while lost in the woods, but not going once they were found.

And all that because of a little thing like them needing to have a limb amputated after something had bitten them.

Nikola didn't fancy ending up with amputated limbs. He didn't fancy being the target of such a creature.

But he had summoned it.

And now, he had to kill it, somehow.

There was only one thing which could save him now. And he was willing to use it.

There was a fox nearby. A small red creature, who was minding its own business.

Nikola called him. Tugging at its connection to all things natural.

The fox attacked the Selkie. It latched on its nose.

Now, Nikola should have seen the problem in that plan from the start.

 But he did not.

How was he supposed to think clearly and come to the conclusion that a Selkie did not need to breathe?

He was still running, screaming, and promising to go to church.

Even if that meant that he would need to go to another town.

A gunshot pierced the night.

Nikola looked at the man before him. He had a scarred face. Not only that, but he also looked so, as if he could bench press him with little to no effort.

The man shot the Selkie once more. The leapt over it and tore out its throat.

The creature might not need to breathe, Nikola reasoned with himself, but it sure as hell needed its throat in one piece where the demons who had created it had placed it.

"Why summon a Selkie," the man asked, as he began to clean his bloody knife on the grass. "When you can't kill them?"

Nikola felt like a bumpkin. Still, he relaxed next to the tree. If the man knew that he was unnatural, then he wasn't showing it.

"I was hungry," Nikola blurted out. Only to blink. "And sleep deprived. Who are you?"

"You should give your name first," the man snarked.

Nikola did a small bow.

"My name is Nikola Asenov," it was the name on his ID, at any rate. He had to get used to the new family name.

"I'm Jack," the man said.

Nikola thought better than to call him the Reaper.

"And you are a druid?" The man asked.

Nikola nodded. If Jack could dispatch a Selkie so, as if it were an old donkey in a Bulgarian village whose owners were going to move in with their children and didn't need it anymore, he was sure that Jack could dispatch him as well.

"A piss poor one," Jack said, as he began to cut into the horse. "I am a ghoul."

There was something to say about a world where vampires, ghouls, and druids lived in the same forests. But when Jack handed Nikola a bloody chunk of meat, the man accepted it with a smile.

"I am going to make squash with that," Nikola felt bold and brave once more. "Would you like to join me for a meal?"

Jack let out a huff.

"You can't eat cooked food, dumbass," the ghoul cut himself a chunk of meat and began to eat it.

"Well, I can still try!"

Famous last words.

But Nikola was not ready to give up on a balanced diet.

He knew that should he start to eat meat and only meat, he was going to be toothless before long.