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Isekai Terry TOD: Chapter 58 – Celery
🕑 Added 2024-08-06 08:35:51 +0000 UTCTerry stood by the stove and stirred the stew occasionally while Analina gave him the scant few details she had about the contract. He could boil it down to one, very uninspiring sentence. A really dangerous bad thing is doing bad thing stuff, and we’d like that to stop. Naturally, no one knew exactly what the bad thing was, or where it was, or how to find it. Terry stirred the stew again. It didn’t really need the extra stirring aside from his vague fear that the stew would burn if he didn’t keep it in regular motion. It did give him a few moments to think. He liked exactly nothing about this contract. If he’d learned anything as a programmer it was that vaguely defined projects were especially susceptible to scope creep. All that vagueness made it very easy to keep expanding on the final size and specifications of the whatever you were coding.
He had the distinct impression that these adventurer contracts were prone to the same thing. A nice tidy contract would have a very clear goal. Go out and kill a specific thing. Go into that abandoned ruin and find a particular relic. At least, that was how it usually worked in video games and novels. He didn’t want to agree to do something he expected would be easy, just to find himself contractually obligated to keep fighting even though the job was worth fifty times what he was going to get paid for it. No, this has the stink of something on it, he thought. It wasn’t straight-up fraud. At least, he didn’t think so. But it felt really hinky to him. He leveled his gaze on Analina, who seemed to intuit his thoughts from that look. She lifted a hand in a just-give-me-a-second gesture.
“I know. I know. This isn’t the kind of contract we normally allow.”
“So, why are you allowing it this time?”
“Because of who it came from,” she said.
Terry’s eyes narrowed. He was going to ask the question even though he was nearly certain about the general shape of the answer if not the specifics.
“Who did it come from?”
“Lord—” she started.
“Stop. The answer is no.”
Analina looked stunned at that answer.
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“Did they ask for me in particular?”
“They did.”
“Then it’s a double no. Only an idiot gets themselves tangled up with nobles, especially when they’re asking for you. I’ve already escaped that cesspit once. I’m not going back for a second swim in that pool of filth. They can find someone else.”
“But the money—”
“Oh, I’d like to get that money. Believe me, I’d love to take their money. It comes with too many strings attached. They’ll never let me just go, do the job, and leave. In fact, I bet they want to meet me in person before I even get started.”
“How did you know that?”
“Because they’re nobles, and I’m a rank two. They’ll try to involve me in their affairs. That’s just another way of saying they’ll try to make their enemies my problem. It’s smart in an amoral sort of way. If they make it look like I’m getting on board with them, their enemies will send people after me. They’ll have to if it looks like Lord whoever is recruiting someone stupidly powerful. Maybe they’ll do it out of fear. Maybe they’ll do it out of jealousy. Maybe they’ll do it because they’re all a bunch of selfish dicks. The reason doesn’t really matter because I’ll still have to defend myself. Only a moron wouldn’t. Oh, and would you look at that. I weaken their enemies, and it doesn’t cost them a single piece of gold. It’s a classic strategy. Why don’t you and him fight?”
“You’re making a lot of assumptions about someone you’ve never even met, don’t you think?”
Terry shrugged and said, “Probably. But I’m allowed to do that. I’m nobody’s vassal, and I don’t plan to ever be one. I’m not obligated to come running just because some noble asks for me.”
Every part of Terry was screaming at him to stop being combative. It was ratcheting up the social tension by the second, and he hated that so much. This was one case where he just couldn’t. He didn’t trust nobles. He didn’t trust their intentions. He didn’t trust their words. Some of that was born out of so many nobles being irredeemable pricks in all the books. Sure, it was a trope, but he was being haunted by the damn things in this world. It seemed like a good safety precaution to just assume they were valid. Some of his mistrust was born out of his own world’s history, though. The abuses of the nobility toward pretty much everyone who wasn’t nobility was well-documented throughout history.
There hadn’t really been any of that inherited douchebaggery in America, but old money families seemed to serve more or less the same role. His mistrust might not have been fair to any theoretical not awful nobles, but he came by it honestly enough. Analina got a very serious expression on her face. It looked almost unnatural on the usually cheerful and talkative woman.
“People are dying,” she said. “Regardless of anything else, don’t you care about that.”
That one hit Terry close to home. While his death back on his old world probably hadn’t led to any huge outpouring of grief, there probably were a few. He was sympathetic to those who were losing loved ones.
“Look, I didn’t say that no one should take the contract. I said that I won’t take the contract. Although, now that I think about it, no one should take that contract. It’s way too vague. I’d bet they know a hell of a lot more about what’s going on than they’ve said. It’s probably worth a hell of a lot more than they’re offering too. If they want to offer a legitimate contract with more details and handle payment through the guild, without any of this come and meet us first bullshit, I’ll consider it.”
“Can I tell them you said that?” asked Analina.
“No.”
Terry turned back to the almost-stew, stirred it, cursed himself for forgetting to buy flour, and dipped a spoon into the bubbling concoction in the pot. He lifted the spoon and blew it on it a few times. He ate the spoonful and sighed. The stuff was passable, good even, better than a lot of the stuff he’d eaten while fleeing the stupidly pretty people, but it wasn’t great. He even knew what the problem was. God damn it. I need to find someone in the world who is growing celery. Still, he was hungry. He dished some of the stew into a bowl and handed it to Analina. He wasn’t especially happy with the woman at the moment, but even he wasn’t going to just eat in front of her without offering some food. There was rude, and then there was rude. After he got some stew for himself, they stood in the kitchen and ate in awkward silence. Haresh came in a few minutes later, seemingly drawn by the smell of the stew. He picked up on the awkwardness immediately.
“Did I miss something else?” he asked.
“Analina is trying to convince me to take a bad contract,” said Terry before the woman could get a word in edgewise.
“It’s not a bad contract just because it comes from a noble. A lot of our contracts come through nobles.”
“That may be so, but that that contract you’re trying to get me take is a bad contract.”
Haresh made his way over to the pot and said, “Well, why don’t one of you tell me about the contract?”
Analina was quicker on the draw that time. She laid out the same details, or lack thereof, to Haresh. Terry followed that up with his take on the matter. Haresh stood in contemplative silence for most of two minutes before he gave Analina a very stern, very paternal look. The woman wilted beneath the weight of that fatherly disapproval. She stared at the floor and even shuffled her feet a little. Terry stared at Haresh in pure awe. I have never witnessed such intense dad energy in my life.
“Fine,” she huffed. “It’s a bad contract.”
“Yes,” said Haresh. “It is a bad contract. And, while I don’t completely agree with Terry’s paranoia, I’d also be suspicious. You should do as Terry suggested. Tell them no. See if they offer a general contract with the guild. Even if they don’t, it might encourage them to offer up some more information about what they're up against.”
“Haresh,” said Terry. “Do you have kids?”
Haresh lifted an eyebrow at Terry and said, “I do. Is that relevant?”
“Wow. I bet they do as their told.”
“I wish that were true,” said Haresh as he heaved a great sigh. “That soup of yours is pretty good.”
It was Terry’s turn to heave a sigh and say, “Celery. Celery. My kingdom for some celery.”
Comments
Pamela Gillespie
Thanks for the chapter
Pamela Gillespie
about what their (should be they're) up against.”
Angela Roberts
Terry continues to brighten my days! He's totally right and maybe Analinna is just a bad negotiator, or nobles cause her to lose her reason or maybe she getting a piece of the pie? Who would offer such a crappy deal? Celery makes stews, baked dishes, soups better. It's totally a taste thing.
SixAughtFive
I have such profound respect for Terry as a protagonist that it's almost hard to put into words. Not only does he stick to his guns, he lays out his problems with the entire deal directly and clearly and remains focused on his own goals without descending into that sort of protagonist sociopathy that's become so common. I hope he gets his celery, he deserves it.
Marian Ch
It's not particularly weird. Celery root is a necessary addition to many dishes to achieve the desired taste.
CentaureHeart
I totally agree with you on most things but I do think celery is gross even when combined aha.
Jason Hardman
It's one of those things that you wouldn't notice was part of a food, until it's missing. It can be surprising how you can dislike some foodstuffs on their own, but like them when combined in a recipe. I'm the same with carrots 🥕.
CentaureHeart
Clearly the weirdest and most outlandish trope in this story is Terry's love for celery. Yuck.
