I moved away from the table, my eyes completely focused on the odd shaped face the bust represented.

  I realized that I had been so wrapped up in the business with the rats, and my own hunger, that I had completely ignored the pedestal and the stone bowl. I put the rat sticker away and went over to the stonework, unsure why this was suddenly so important.

  Looking at the plaque was similar to when I had looked at the book earlier, and the words were visible without a tooltip. They were in an unknown language at first. As I looked at them, they slowly started to morph and change and move about until I could read them.

  The plaque read:

  Sir Rasten Pettyworth III

  Husband. Father. Sorcerer. Heretic.

  And below that, closer to the bowl:

  Blessings of the Heretic

  I looked at the bust. Somewhere in the back of my head I could feel the tug of hunger and thirst, but ignored it. Now that I was up close to the thing it was a little easier to make out the figure it represented but it still looked… off.

  The bust was made from some strange type of metal that I didn’t recognize. It had an odd sheen to it and looked a little iron like. There was an additional luster to it that was closer to silver or pewter.

  The bust was of a hook-nosed man looking to his left with a clean shaven upper lip. His chin had an unkept beard that was easily a foot long. His eyes were too close together and his ears seemed too large for his head.

  One ear was a little too far down compared to the other, and I noticed one eye was a tad bit too large. The eye also appeared to have a slight smeared look to it.

  It reminded me of early AI attempts at making people, but was close enough to human to be unsettling. The tooltip for the bust read:

  Bust of Sir Rasten Pettyworth III

  Material: Hellkissed Iron

  This is a bust depicting the long deceased Sir Rasten Pettyworth III. While Rasten was neither a knight or even a third of his name, he sure put in the effort to make folks believe he was both.

  He even officially changed his name to try to avoid any confusion. Of course that just created more and was – honestly - pretty sad and pathetic.

  Why is he important?

  Well, after becoming obsessed with finding a cure for a disease that had claimed his wife and had then befallen his son, he succeeded.

  The upside was the cure would work immediately, and his son would lead a mostly healthy life.

  The downside was that it was earned by denouncing his faith and sacrificing himself to a demonic deity.

  Oh, and the cure worked on the disease but, unfortunately, would result in his son becoming an Harbinger of the Flayed on his 35th birthday.

  Well, that sounded like a bunch of nonsense I wanted absolutely nothing to do with.

  I looked at the bowl warily. It was filled with a clear liquid that had a slight glow to it. This glow was similar to the luminescence I had seen in aquatic life, but there didn’t appear to be anything else in the bowl. A notice popped up above it:

  Unknown Liquid

  Despite myself, I laughed out loud at how absolutely unhelpful that was. I didn’t have to look at my thirst gauge to know I was very, very thirsty.

  Looking at the liquid made my mouth begin to salivate, and there was an almost overwhelming urge to just bury my face in it and start lapping it up.

  There was a brief moment where I could even visualize myself doing that and the relief it would bring. I resisted the urge, fully aware that any kind of ‘blessing’ a heretic would provide would not be pleasant.

  A notice in my HUD popped up, and I broke away from staring at the bowl to focus on it. It said, “New Quest!” but didn’t provide me any details. I opened my book and found the page that had the information populated:

  New Quest!

  The Heretical Son Part One

  Your first quest! Boy you sure are stacking up a lot of firsts today! As far as quests go, this one is a doozy and isn’t one we would have recommended as your first quest, but here we are.

  Sir Rasten is dead after sacrificing himself to a demon of the 9 circles of hell. His son was cured of his illness but was doomed to become a Harbinger of the Flayed whatever THAT is!

  Investigate and find out who the son is and learn the true history of the Pettyworth family.

  Reward: 700 XP | Silver Reward | Boots of the Fallen

  The announcements from before did say I would get quests but I really wasn’t trying to get involved with something this insane. Sure, the rewards were definitely something for me to consider, but still.

  I felt like it would have been nice for my first quest to be killing a couple of rats, but oh well. A silver reward was probably worth the effort and so were those boots. Even before I checked the description I could tell they were better than fuzzy slippers:

  Boots of the Fallen

  Armor Rating: 10

  Rare (Magical)

  Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

  Crafting: None

  Guaranteed to make you feel like you are new boot goofin’, these things not only let you walk on broken glass but give you a little pep in your step!

  Player is 50% resistant to knock down effects. Player sprint speed is increased by 10% and player is able to sprint for 2x as long before stamina depletion.

  This buff stacks with other speed buffs and is calculated after all bonuses are applied.

  These boots are puncture proof.

  As great as the boots sounded I knew that I was in no position to start heading towards some high level quest. I weighed my options.

  There was an unknown, pungent liquid in my inventory that a talking rat had been carrying. The same rats that appeared to eat spoiled goblin meat. Or an unknown liquid that was seemingly tied to some demonic deity from the underworld.

  Decisions, decisions. I glanced at my thirst gauge and saw that it was bordering on red.

  Still, it did not feel easy to make the right choice. I was pretty well convinced I wasn’t about to eat anything the rats were carrying, spoiled or not.

  I eyed Jeed’s leg, feeling the slight hypocrisy in thinking that.

  I looked back at the water in the bowl, still tempted to drink it directly out of the stonework. Instead, I pulled one of the canteens out of my inventory. This one had 3 out of 10 uses and I poured the contents of it out. It was only a quarter full and didn’t take long to drain.

  It was literally a ‘pungent liquid’, though it did smell slightly familiar. It reminded me of vodka that someone had just thrown up, but with a hint of vinegar. I was thankful to be pouring it out.

  It took a second for my brain to catch up to the fact that I was more thankful because it was alcohol, and not just because it stank. I wondered slightly at that.

  I remembered the description of the canteen said I could reuse them with a different liquid. That there was just a slight chance it would become ruined in the process. There wasn’t a way to know for sure if it was ruined or not, but I decided to take the chance.

  I dipped the canteen in the bowl and began to fill it with the unknown liquid.

  The canteen immediately began to hiss and smoke as the liquid bubbled. A tiny splash of the liquid got on my left hand as I dropped the canteen in the bowl. Where the liquid had hit my hand now sizzled and steamed as it burned my flesh in a quarter sized blister.

  I yelped and backed away from the bowl as it continued to spit and foam. The blister on my hand grew and the pain intensified, feeling like something was drilling a hole into my hand.

  Without thinking I pulled the other canteen out, and splashed the liquid on the growing blister. The burning feeling subsided, but the ache and dull pain was still there.

  The blister remained, angry and large. It had grown to be about double the size, and was so full I could feel the weight of it on my hand when I moved it around. I looked back at the bowl but there was no sign of the canteen. The water was back to being a perfect clear liquid.

  Other than a few sizzling craters on some of the wood shelves next to the bowl there was no indicator that anything had even happened.

  “Some blessing,” I said, looking down at my hand.

  I was thankful the weird rat liquid had helped. Whatever had possessed me to do that had possibly kept it from growing even bigger.

  Achievement Unlocked!

  I am Jack’s Blistered Hand!

  You used chemicals to negate a chemical burn! Well, technically it wasn’t a chemical burn but some kind of crazy ‘blessing’. But your body doesn’t know the difference between blessing or sizzling, boiling, acid!

  And it’s not technically negated but at least the pain is!

  (Bronze reward)

  Was that a Fight Club reference? Great the fucking AI was trying to be ‘edgy’ I think.

  I had spoken too soon, the blister on my hand was in fact growing. I was tempted to just pop it and be done with it, figuring I could use the gauze on whatever damage was done.

  There was also the fact I’d be running around a dingy, filthy alien dungeon with an open wound if I did.

  Not having any other option, I just did my best to ignore it entirely while I went back to the rat leg. I had to compartmentalize or I would for sure be overcome with the fact I almost pushed my entire face into a bowl of acid.

  Whatever was going on with that plaque it had fully distracted me from the fact I was starving to death. I was in no hurry to let it happen again.

  My hunger was continuing to grow, and I was starting to feel a sense of panic returning. I contemplated the leg for a moment before deciding to open my book to look at the status more closely. Since my HUD wouldn’t allow me to see much more than a brief description of my status I hoped the book would give me more information.

  The icon for Hangry was of an angry face with what looked like a turkey leg above it. I mentally clicked on it and thankfully there was some more information than before:

  Hangry

  Duration: Until satiated or replaced by STARVATION

  Effects: This is a precursor to STARVATION. Volatile mood swings trending towards anger and violent outbursts. Can cause pain tolerance (but NOT pain resistance) and a temporary 15 % increase in strength.

  Outbursts that utilize strength will increase starvation rate and can result in adrenal fatigue and/or failure.

  (Note: This status is due to a lack of satiation. In order to be afflicted with this status, a player must have depleted their satiation completely without having any sort of food stuffs in their fast food block.

  Having food in your inventory does not affect this status. If a player has food in their fast food block at the time of the hangry status taking effect, they will automatically eat whatever has been slotted there.)

  I noticed that this description was devoid of the annoying attempts at tongue-in-cheek humor the system had been slathering on everything up until this point. Whatever the difference was, I wasn’t sure if I should be concerned about that or not.

  For some reason this description listed the buffs and debuffs. That part about ‘adrenal fatigue and/or failure’ sounded less than ideal. I clicked on starvation:

  Starvation

  Duration: Until satiated or until DEAD.

  Effects: Phase one: hunger pangs along with being easily distracted. Player will find themselves increasingly manic. Phase two: hunger pangs intensify. Lethargy sets in.

  Brain fog will lead to confusion and slow thinking. Phase three: Hunger pangs become fully consuming. Body will no longer respond to most commands. Visible muscle atrophy. Player will die soon. Phase four: Death.

  (Note: any satiation achieved during phase 3 will result in sickness and will require a period of recovery.)

  I didn’t need to click on ‘DEAD’ to know what that status would say.

  I noticed this description also lacked the attempts at humor from before. Maybe it was because I was in the book. I doubted it was because it was something so serious. It was pretty snarky even talking about my potential demise so that couldn’t be it.

  A part of me missed the humor given how grim my future began to look if I didn’t eat soon. I didn’t look further into what being thirsty would bring. The fog in my brain was making things harder to focus on.

  My hand suddenly screamed in pain, and I looked down at it.

  The blister had grown exponentially larger and was now the size of a baseball. There was just too happening, and I hadn’t made it more than a few yards from the starting point. The hangry status was also making me feel totally insane and all over the place.

  I looked closer at the bubble and… oh my god. Was that something moving around in there? Was my hand blister fucking growing something? The notification that popped up confirmed it:

  Puss Bubble Larvae

  Level 0

  Well that isn’t something you see every day. It looks like you’ve got yourself a little buddy!

  This is a larva that will grow into a new creature! What kind of creature do you ask? Well, I can’t tell you that, silly, you haven’t discovered it yet!

  “Whaaat?!” I screamed, holding my hand away from me like it was somebody else’s.

  “There’s a creature growing inside me?”