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Isekai Terry TOD: Chapter 50 – While the Getting Is Good
🕑 Added 2024-07-28 06:29:21 +0000 UTCTerry ended up walking past the market on his way to leave town only to find Haresh, Ekori, and Jaban there looking around with vaguely horrified expressions on their faces. He walked up behind them and tried to figure out what they were looking at. The market looked more or less the way he’d left it. Given that rumors moved faster than the speed of light, they had to know what he’d done. After he got bored of waiting for them to notice him, he finally spoke up.
“What’s so interesting?” he asked.
All three turned to give him one of those looks. He looked back at them.
“What?” he asked.
“You did all of this?” asked Haresh.
“Of course, I didn’t. Those Church guys did more damage than I did.”
That answer didn’t seem to make any of them feel better about the situation. He didn’t know why they were so worked up about all of it. It wasn’t like they attacked anyone. Maybe they’re worried about the whole guilt by association thing, mused Terry. Come to think of it, that’s probably a fair concern. Not that I can do much about it. If the Church decided that anyone associated with him was fair game, well, it would mostly be proof of their rampant dickishness. It would also play to the whole corrupt church thing. The more Terry thought about it, the more he started to realize that just wandering off and leaving them to their own devices would be proof of his own rampant dickishness. They certainly hadn’t done anything to deserve having his enemies targeting them. Of course, the relationship between deserve and receive was often pretty tangential.
He struggled for a few moments as he tried to figure out what if any responsibility he had in regard to their safety. When that didn’t yield any firm results, he turned to a better metric. How shitty will I feel if I do just walk away, and they get killed by the Douche Knight or some other Church lackey? He wasn’t shocked to discover that the answer was pretty goddamned shitty. That would prove a severe impediment to Terry’s overall quality of life. After all, he had never found guilt to be a good seasoning for anything. He’d need to keep them around until they got strong enough to handle someone with rank three strength, which was about where he’d put the squared-jawed asshat he just thrown through solid doors.
“We should go,” said Terry. “Unless you want to hang around to see if the Church isn’t going to target you. Your choice.”
He figured that was one way to absolve himself of any real responsibility. If they decided not to go with him, whatever came after that was truly beyond his power to influence. Terry recognized that thinking for the moral sleight-of-hand that it was. However, that didn’t make it fundamentally untrue. People did need to take some responsibility for their own safety. He did feel that free will should have at least some say in people’s decisions, assuming that their decisions didn’t involve threats to other people’s lives. If they wandered off and got themselves deaded up, he’d probably still feel guilty. It would be a lesser guilt. A more manageable guilt. Less pushing an old woman into traffic guilt and more grossly misrepresenting his earnings at tax time guilt. Wow, self, that was some politician-level manipulation of the facts. You should probably be ashamed of yourself.
“Why were you fighting with people from the church? Did you kill any of them?” demanded Ekori.
“They started it. I was just minding my own business, buying a hat. The next thing I know, those asshats started firing crossbows at me. And, yes. Of course, I killed some of them. When was the last time that you didn’t have a fight to the death with people who shot crossbows and arrows at you? To say nothing of having a Douche Knight attack you.”
“What’s a douche?” asked Jaban.
That question brought Terry up short. He definitely didn’t want to explain what it actually was.
“I’ll tell you when you’re older,” said Terry.
“You fought a knight?” asked Haresh.
“Fought is probably a strong word for it. I hit him with some rocks.”
“Is he alive?” asked a pale Haresh.
Terry shrugged.
“I don’t know. Maybe. Let’s say that I don’t know that he’s dead and leave it at that.”
“This is bad,” whispered Ekori. “This is so bad.”
“Bad!” shouted Jaban. “Try catastrophic!”
“Okay,” said Terry, “I can see that you all have strong feelings about this, and I totally respect that. But if we could walk while you have your panic attacks, that would be good. Multitasking and all that.”
“What are you babbling about?” demanded Ekori.
“I’m saying that whatever you ultimately decide to do, standing around isn’t going to turn out well for any of us. Well, it probably won’t. I guess that depends on how seriously they take my threats.”
“What threats?” asked Jaban.
“Violence. Mutual destruction. Property damage. I didn’t get into much detail. It was just your standard-issue kind of threat. Leave me alone or else. You know what I mean.”
“We’re all dead,” said Haresh.
“Not right now, we aren’t,” answered Terry, “which is why we need to go. They’re not in any shape to follow us at the moment. So, let’s get going while the getting is good. Chop, chop, people. Daylight’s burning.”
It took a couple more minutes of encouraging the shellshocked adventurers, but they did ultimately stagger into motion. He did need to keep riding herd of them to keep them moving, but he decided that only needed to last until they got their bearings back. He could let them make a real decision about what to do after they recovered their equilibrium and were less likely to be killed on sight immediately when Church people saw them. It wasn’t an ideal solution, but it was definitely better than the stand around in one place and wait for vengeance to descend strategy they had seemed ready to deploy. They’re reactions shocked him a little given how prone to violence everyone else seemed to be.
He’d have thought that a run-away-and-look-for-an-advantage-later strategy would be hardwired into every brain in this stupid new world. It seemed like evolution would have bred that instinct into the survivors. Then again, those crossbow people and archers had kept firing even after it was painfully obvious that he was going to win. He’d thought that they were just running a delaying action to give the Douche Knight time to show up. He hadn’t considered the possibility that they were all just stupid. Of course, he had imported his ideas about evolution from an entirely different world. Maybe all the magic in the air had short-circuited standard evolution for some alternate path. Maybe people here only passed on traits that made them act like grandstanding jackasses.
While Terry toyed with that idea for a while, he kept urging the other adventurers to keep moving. One by one, they got their heads on straight again. Haresh was first. That was good because it reduced the leadership load on Terry. Haresh could take on the lion’s share of keeping Ekori and Jaban moving at a brisk pace. That let Terry focus on things like watching out for monsters and killing anything that showed up. While a few things started to appear after they put some distance between themselves and the town, he didn’t even try to get the other adventurers to kill them. They didn’t have time for Jaban to be himself during a fight. They needed any obstacles to die and as quick as possible. The upside was that it let Terry slap a few more things to death. He worried that it might not be entirely healthy to channel his angst that way, but that it was probably better than day drinking or becoming a finance bro. Some fates were best avoided.
It was only at the end of the day when they were setting up camp that the conversation that Terry had been expecting finally manifested.
“I think you need to tell us everything,” said Haresh. “If you’ve brought the Church’s wrath down on us, we need to know.”
Terry considered that before he nodded.
“I guess you better settle in and charge your suspension of disbelief,” said Terry. “This will take a while.”
“Suspension of disbelief?” asked Ekori.
“It’s a kind of bridge,” replied Terry.
