“Xerica, let’s get another bottle!” said the Great Hero, trying to keep his balance on the barstool.

“Don’t you think you’ve had enough to drink?” responded the redheaded fire mage. Her arm was on his shoulder, keeping him upright.

“Besides, Tommy,” added Lensa, clinging to his side in an attempt to support herself more than him. “We won’t be able to really celebrate afterwards if we drink too much.”

“So much for all of her shyness”, thought Artyom to himself, barely restraining a shiver. He sat on his own stool at a table apart from the others, slouched over a small bottle of apple Sparkle held in a vice-like grip and an expression that showcased years of wear underneath his hawk-like gaze. His posture only declined as the small party went on, the rest of the team enjoying top-line alcohol while he settled for getting drunk on paranoia.

The party had obtained the next mcguffin as part of the Great Hero’s quest earlier that day, so the team leader and hero, Tommy, decided to celebrate. As part of their next lead, they’d all come to the beach town of Sandy Cove to search for information in their famous library. Well, Artyom and Neitra had come for that. Tommy seemed more interested in the beach, and the four harpies who made up his apparent harem. Too bad their intentions with Tommy weren’t as wholly innocent as the other way around.

Over the one and a half weeks he’d spent in this World, two days of which were with the hero, Artyom had collected enough pieces of the puzzle to put together a grim vision of the verity beneath its innocent surface. Ironic that it was a fairytale World of all places he’d uncovered such a conspiracy. It was weird though, maybe TOAL’s rating system needed an update after this mission to take into account the morality of acting deities as well? Either way, Artyom was just happy that he was sent here instead of a naive scout.

After he’d fit the pieces together, it took only a few hours for fear and paranoia to set in. Realizing that everything apparently wrong with the World was linked to a singular deific malefic entity pulling the strings would do that to you. He’d refused to get drunk alongside his team for starters, but brooding in a corner without taking his eyes off the group might’ve been a bit too much. Artyom took a deep breath and a long swig of his Sparkle, the heavily carbonated beverage searing its way through his throat and bringing him back into the land of the reposed. He knew for a fact that despite these ladies being aligned with a most-probably evil goddess, they weren’t going to outright kill him and dump his body in a ditch somewhere. They most certainly could if they got the jump on him, and they could’ve easily done it to Neitra by now, but they’d chosen to bully them instead. That, and possibly send assassins their way. They’d already faced one pair of them the night before, attacking them while camped out in a forest, and apparently that was the very first time such an event occurred; the day right after Artyom joined.

Artyom got up from his stool, ready to retire for the night. The Great Hero had been kept safe and sound so far by these possible ne'er-do-wells, and Artyom was confident that the hero would continue to be cared for while under their watchful eye, in more ways than one. Artyom shivered again at the thought. He didn’t really judge Tommy for accepting these ladies as more than just teammates; it really didn’t hurt anyone, even if such a lifestyle wasn’t for him. Just the way that they held all of the cards and Tommy didn’t even know that there was a game being played didn’t settle well with Artyom. Too bad he couldn’t just barge into their relationship, dump all of the info he’d collected, and expect everything to work out. That was how he would get kicked out of the group, piss off a deity with plenty of mortal resources, and possibly wind up dead in a ditch.

To prevent that last part from happening anyway via an opportune assassination, he’d decided to camp out on the outskirts of town that night instead. Sandy Cove was of course a very voguish tourist attraction, and was especially popular this time of year. Artyom secretly checked the other inns in town for vacancies, but they were all booked. Only the most expensive hotel in town conveniently had enough open rooms to accommodate the entire party, let alone anyone, and that was on top of the massive “hero’s party” discount they gave. Whether or not it was too good to be true didn’t matter to Artyom anymore. At this point, any kind of good was to be violently interrogated.

He passed by Neitra, who was beginning to droop from her own stool at the bar. She wasn’t crowded around the hero like the others, but kept close by the distance of several seats. She looked down at her own bottle of beer with a serene expression, a strong red blush lying on her somewhat tanned cheeks.

“Goodnight Neitra, I’m headed to bed,” said Artyom.

“Uh, oh. Goodniight,” she replied, turning slowly to face him.

Artyom stopped when he saw her face, a sudden epiphany breaking its way into his mind.

“Hey Neitra, I thought you had a poison resistance Skill, right?” asked Artyom.

“Oh, yeah. I have uh… [Greater Resist Poison],” replied Neitra. “What about it?”

“Well, why isn’t it working on your beer? Alcohol’s a poison, so shouldn’t its effects be resisted?”

“Huh? Well, it doesn’t work on enjoyable things. One time, I was hit with dreamweed spores and it didn’t do anything against that.”

“Dreamweed?” asked Artyom. The plant probably only existed in this particular World, but he could make out what it did based on the name. Still, no harm in asking for clarification.

“Yeah, it’s this rare plant that grows faaar away from any city. Breathing in its spores makes you feel really tired, but really good. And I was in the middle of a quest too, so it was super annoying for it to happen.”

“Huh, you don’t say? Well, nice chatting. I’m headed to my room now.”

After parting ways, Artyom thought to himself as he made his way through the hotel to the room the party rented for him. What was originally a great fear of an assassination attempt now turned into a near-uncontainable excitement at a great opportunity. Artyom unlocked the door and set foot inside his suite. The room itself was quite cozily arranged, despite the sheer size and multitude of amenities within. There was a bed, dresser and cabinet, kitchenette, bathroom, and stone fireplace all loaded into the miniature-apartment. After scouting out the space and laying down a multitude of wards, Artyom gave Gus a call on his phone to make a quick update and requisition.

…

“You want WHAT?” asked Gus in disbelief. “Seeing as how you’re still on your mission, I’m going to assume you’re not messing with me and get it to you after this call.”

“Thanks Gus!” replied Artyom. “By the way, everything weird I’ve seen so far here points to being the work of an evil goddess who’s planning something bad. The Earther’s safe for now, but I think it’s time to start planning a trick-or-treat.” He decided to stick with the codeword for a full raid by TOAL instead of spelling it out. Sound wards and the phone’s amnesia spell should hopefully be the only lines of defense needed, but Gus insisted on such protocol.

After filling Gus in on all of the details he’d collected during his time there, Artyom could hear a prolonged sigh on the other end. “Artyom, I’m convinced you’re messing with me if you’re just going to dump something with this kind of gravity on my head out of nowhere. Especially if it’s after your previous request. Something tells me you really don’t need that requisition if you’re already acting like this.”

“Oh no, it’s still needed, just not for me per se. I just figured that I can be serious and mess with you at the same time!”

“You truly are a diabolical genius, you know? That’s why I gave you this mission in the first place. Anyway, we’re going to need more information before we can conduct a trick-or-treat. We don’t all want to get smited the moment we point our guns at the sky. Start getting us some intel on this goddess figure and what we can expect from her and her followers first. And before that, have you figured out anything about how this entire reincarnation business works? Right now, there isn’t much for us to do except extract the Earther. So until you figure that out, there isn’t much else a trick-or-treat will be good for.”

“I wish I knew, but I haven’t had a chance to even talk to our guy alone about it yet! I’ll try and forward that investigation in parallel, hopefully we’ll get everything we need before our shit hits their fan.”

“Agreed. If that’s everything, I’ll hang up now and send over your request. And Artyom?”

“Yeah?”

“I knew there was something going on with this world. I know you’re part of the executive council, a veteran of the War of the Seven Worlds, yadda yadda, but you’re still mortal and you don’t even have any levels there. Please don’t take any undue risks.”

Artyom was silent on his end for a while. “Yeah, I’ll be careful. But with everything that’s going on, I’ll have to take some risk if I want to uncover anything. I’ll try not to let it be too much.”

“... Thanks.”

With that, Gus hung up the phone. Not 5 minutes later, a small box appeared from the ground out of a circle of glowing runes. Artyom waited for the light to fade before opening it and retrieving its contents. He kept it by his side as he slept that night on the multi-thousand thread count sheets, radio silence carrying him off to a dreamless slumber.

The next morning Artyom awoke safely, to his disappointment. No assassination attempts or triggered wards wrested him from his restful sleep that night, but that only meant he would have more energy for the upcoming events of the day. He roused himself out of his heavenly cocoon and began readying himself using his suite’s amenities. A trip to the bathroom and a cup of strong tea diluted with cream and sugar later, Artyom was ready to greet the day.

Rather than the day itself, he ended up greeting the rest of the party in beach-ready attire.

“Hey Artyom!” shouted Tommy, as he and his gaggle of beauties made their way out of their rooms, he himself in a pair of moss-green swimming trunks. Unsurprisingly, Lensa and Ecole came alongside the Great Hero out of the same door. “We’re headed to the beach! Where's Neitra?”

“Is she going to show up?” asked Lensa innocently, hugging the hero’s side. She was dressed in a tight one piece swimsuit with the holes for legs raised well above what was necessary. “Maybe we should go without her?”

“There’s a lot to do today, Tommy. We should head out quickly!” said Xerica, putting her left hand on her hip. She was wearing a bikini top and long towel around her waist, both with a blue hibiscus pattern that left little to the imagination. The towel had a gap on the rightmost side, fully exposing a toned leg.

“I’m here!” shouted Neitra as she ran down the hallway. Unlike the others, she was wearing street clothes in the form of a green linen dress with a brown leather sleeveless vest thrown over it.

“Didn’t you get the memo, Neitra?” asked Daisy. She was dressed in a crop top and bikini bottom pulled much too tightly below the waist, highlighting every bit of detail underneath it much to the pleasure and chagrin of the men. “We came to town to go to the beach, why aren’t you dressed for it?”

“We came here to go to the library,” replied Neitra, her voice calm yet confident.

“And doesn’t Tommy deserve to celebrate after getting the Goddess’ Key?” asked Ecole, who was in a bog-standard red bikini with a skirt around the bottom piece.

Neitra took a breath and shifted her weight to her front foot, steeling her gaze. “There’s no point celebrating if we don’t know where to use the key.”

The tension in the air was palpable enough that even Tommy realized what was going on. He immediately jumped between the two groups, holding out his hands to both of them.

“Hey, hey! Hold on a minute! We can do both! If you aren’t interested in going to the beach with us, you can go to the library first and join us later. It looks like even Artyom isn’t planning on joining us either, so he can go with you!”

Everyone stood still, waiting for anyone else to be the first to react. Xerica was the one to finally break the stalemate with a sigh.

“Alright, fine. Let’s just get going, we have a full day at the beach ahead of us.” she said. Everyone else seemed to relax at this.

“Oh, and you two,” added the hero. “I’m planning to host a barbecue at 5 pm today, so make sure to be there by then, hopefully with some drinks! Enjoy your study date in the meantime!” The two caught his subtle wink at the end and responded with eyerolls once they were facing away.

“Yeah, we’ll be there, see you around.” replied Artyom. He and Neitra were the first ones to leave while the others were fussing over whether to use sunscreen.