A guy who got reincarnated into another world walks into a bar...

Gina and I were surrounded by an army of empty cups, mugs, and glasses. Most were Gina’s, but I knocked back my fair share of them. It was Coral’s idea. After the first round of oromargaritas, she called for a toast. To celebrate us finding the next step in our journey, and to celebrate her successfully casting a divination spell for the first time in years.

I was going to turn the offer down, but I remember what she said. Go with the flow. Maybe I should be more adaptive. After all, hot women are never wrong.

Besides, it would be rude to refuse.

So it started with one round. Then another. Them another. Then another.

Oromargaritas, sunfruit mojitos, dragon tears. All sorts of drinks, all sorts of flavors.

Coral knew her way around alcoholic beverages and she was more than happy to prove it. I was always a lightweight, but the array of concoctions would be enough to knock my entire baseball team out for the count. Gina, infuriatingly, was nothing more than tipsy.

I turned to her. “Anyways, you’re, like, a tutorial NPC, right?”

“Mhm,” she said, another glass already at her lips.

“How many new Players have you given a tutorial to?”

She raised the glass higher and higher until she slammed it back down to the table, empty.

“I dunno,” she said. Then burped. “A few.”

“So you just follow them around? For how long?”

“A full tutorial lasts a week. After that, they’re fully acclimated and ready to face the world. And as a tutorial NPC, it would be against my programming to abandon a new Player. So that’s why I’m still here and haven’t scrambled off. But I’ve never had a first time player this tough.”

She grabbed another glass and began emptying it.

I shrugged. “Sorry.” I took a few sips from my own glass. My brain felt like it was strangling itself, so I probably had enough to drink. That wasn’t gonna stop me though.
“Hey, how many other Players have we met?” I asked.

“None so far,” Gina said. “They tend not to stay in these low-level areas.”

I nodded. Now I was even more curious to meet this Half-Sword Dave. What kind of man was he? And why was he the next step to defeating the Demon King? I was in no real state to ponder that.

I sat back, making my full belly slosh. “God, I’m gonna piss so much later…” Then I realized something.

“Do you guys, like, pee or poop?” I asked.

Coral look confused but Gina shook her head.

“We don’t have that here. This is an RPG, not a dumb resource management game.”

“So that’s why I haven’t peed or poopeded since I got here. I thought my metabolism was still just wonky or something.” I swished my glass around, making the beverage form a tiny whirlpool. “But how am I gonna get sober? Don’t I have to piss the alcohol out of my system?”

Coral, for the first time that evening, put her mixing tools down.

“Oh! I know this!” she said. “Take that uh… whatcha call it? Foun. Take your foun out!”
I did. Under the pretense of alcohol, with no more worries of stigma to speak of, Gina and Coral both stared at it. I realized that Coral’s pupils were looking a little dilated, and maybe it wasn’t just Gina and me that she was making drinks for.

“I’m assuming these aren’t common here.”

“Not one bit. But we are aware of ‘em,” Coral said. “Every Player’s got one, and it’s how they access the Beings from Beyond. It also tells you vital information about the world that no one else can. Use it to check your stats!”

I went back to that weird looking health app. Nothing had changed, but now I noticed one of the menu options said ‘Status Effects.’ I tapped that, and saw a whole list of them. Dizzy, Hyperaware, Meditative. All of them were grayed out, except for one: Drunk. It had brown text with a little symbol next to it, also brown, of bubbles. I wondered what that was all about, so I tapped it.

I was sober.

I had to blink a few times. Now I saw that the army of glasses wasn’t so daunting when you had double vision, but it was still an impressive number. The pressure in my skull had vanished, and everything seemed to right itself, like soldiers falling in line. I looked at Gina and Coral and it was a lot more obvious that they were inebriated now that I wasn’t.

I tapped the button again and it may have been the worst decision of my life.

Imagine experiencing the physical sensation of three-hour drinking binge but condensed into a few milliseconds. Yeah. It was like that. I cradled my head in my hands and whimpered. It was like someone smashed my brains out with a gold brick garnished with just a hint of lemon. Coral slid another drink my way, and I gladly downed it. It numbed the pain just enough for me to appreciate it.

“That’s a neat trick,” I said, coughing. “Did Dave teach you that?”

Coral picked up a bottle and went back to mixing. “Ummm, you bet. He most certainly did,” she said. She poured a little too much into the jigger and it overflowed. 

My eyes narrowed but I didn’t press her. Mainly cuz I was still suffering. It turns out when you “reactivate” being drunk, it’s as if the alcohol just hit your cerebral cortex for the first time. But going through that whole experience was incredible. Just how powerful was this phone? What other premium features did it have to offer?

I knew just the person to ask.

“Maggie!” I cheered when she picked up.

“If you call me that again I will find you and reap you myself,” she said in her trademark raspy drawl. The crackles in her voice pleased my drunken eardrums in a way sober me would not approve of. But I currently was not sober me, so I let a dumb grin spread across my flushed face.

“And how did you get access to me so quickly?” she asked.

I shrugged, then realized she couldn’t see me do that and said out-loud, “I dunno.”

There was a ruffling of paper on her end before she groaned.

“Son of a bitch,” she said. “Upper management just formerly assigned me as your personal advisor.”

“Wuzzat mean?”

“It means that you were such a dumbass and called me so persistently that they assume I’m the only person who can help you!” Each word of hers increased in volume until it crescendoed on the very last “you.” 

“I mean, isn’t that the case?”

She groaned again before taking in a deep breath. “True enough. How can I help you today, valued customer?” There was enough venom in her breath to kill a small mammal.

“So I’m at the Wet Saddle right now, and I just met Coral, she’s a lovely lady, really makes a great drink. Many great drinks. And she showed me this thing on my phone that lets me toggle between being drunk and not being drunk. Oh wow that’s really cool I thought but I also thought what else am I missing out on that I just don’t know about because I never encountered the use case for it? You know?”

Margaret was silent.

“Basically,” I said, “what are all the features that come with a premium life service plan?”

“You’re kidding, right?” she said. “A list came with your phone. It’s a massive PDF explaining all the new features to expect. It even has an FAQ section.”

“Really? Where?”

“It’s in the Files app.”

I nearly threw up hearing that.

“Who the hell uses the Files app? It’s a phone! Not a PC or a laptop or a filing cabinet, a phone!”

“Don’t shoot the messenger. Do you need my help to find and open that app? Like a dumb little baby?”

“Relax, missy,” I said. “I got this.”

I pulled the phone away from my ear and held it about a foot from my face. The letters and buttons and lights danced around but it was still my phone. I should be able to do this. I swiped through my various apps, trying to find the Files app. I did, eventually. In my defense I had never used it before. 

I opened it, and there it was. A file by the name of “README.pdf” was the only one available. I brought my hand up, which felt like it had a dumbbell attached to it, and tapped the options. Open, Cut, Copy… My finger landed on one of them. I sat there, waiting for the PDF to load. It really was big, considering how long it was taking.

After a full two minutes, Margaret asked, “Hello?”

I brought the phone back up to my ear.

“I think I deleted it.”

Silence.

And Margaret hung up.

Though this was objectively a bad situation, since I no longer had a resource that detailed what extra features my life now had, for some reason I felt as if I had won. Not sure what I had won, but the feeling of victory was floating all around.

I raised my hand.

“Coral! How ‘bout one more round.”

~⚔~

We stumbled out of the Wet Saddle to a darkened sky. Well, I was the one who stumbled. Gina walked out just fine. I guess she really was used to Coral’s drinking habits.

Finally outside and with fresh wind in my face, I pulled out my phone and toggled off my drunkness. Though I was living in a world of sword and sorcery, that moment of breathing in the cool evening air the instant I sobered up was pure magic.

Four days remained between right now and the death of the Demon King. 

“Where even is Half-Sword Dave?” I asked.

“He’s up north, in the woods. It’s only a few hours of walking. We should reach there around moonrise. Then after sleeping at his place, he can teach us his secrets.”

We walked a couple hundred of paces when the door to the Wet Saddle opened and Coral peeked her head out. I turned back to say goodbye, until I saw the fury in her eyes.

“You didn’t pay your tab!” she bellowed.

And that’s when we started running.

Thanks to the boost of adrenaline, the journey to Half-Sword Dave’s hideout in the woods only took half as long. Which was still a good few hours. The trees here stretched high up into the sky, their pointy tops like emerald spears. We stepped through roots and branches, and did our best to avoid any random encounters with wildlife. Somehow, we made it unscathed.

A man was sitting next to his campfire. I couldn’t make out much in the dim firelight, but I saw his massive biceps ripple as he sharpened half a sword with a stone. His ruby red eyes were laser focused on the task at hand. 

Gina stepped into the spotlight.

“Dave! Oh my God, it’s been so—”

Dave hurled the sword at Gina’s head.