Not the Teacher He Was Waiting For

Even if she hadn’t spoken, John already knew who was behind him. There was only one teacher in Ashcroft who was capable to make him feel a chill down his spine with just the two words she had spoken. He turned around and saw Mrs. Wentworth staring right at him with a look that always terrified her students. She never really had any level of patience for misbehavior from anyone, especially when inside the school’s grounds.

Being caught by his History and Civics teacher didn’t help John either. He had her classes back to back first thing on Tuesdays, so he feared this incident might come back to bite him in some way during them. The only thing that could help him was that he did well and behaved in her classes. He enjoyed her classes, some of the stories from her lectures were even used as scenario inspiration for his stories.

To add to John’s chagrin, it seemed that she only arrived at the moment that John had decided to be brave, leaving Frank scot-free for his antics and threats towards the Gamer.

After a couple of seconds, which to John seemed like an eternity, she finally spoke, “You have my lecture next, get to my classroom now!”

“But the bell hasn’t even rung yet,” John still in his anger high tried to contest her order.

His teacher never missed a beat, “I don’t care. Your language was unacceptable, and because of it, you lost your social privileges. And don’t make any plans for lunch either, I have an assignment for you to do. Now, go.” Just as John turned to leave, she turned to the jock and said. “And you, Mr. Dickinson, what are you doing here? You better not be wasting your time off of my lectures by being a nuisance. Your team better win today.” Which effectively took the grin off the jock’s face.

Well, at least there is some level of justice being done, John thought. Weirdly enough, Mrs. Wentworth did not follow him to her classroom. By the path she took, he figured she headed towards the faculty room.

John mindlessly entered her classroom. The moment he stepped inside, he found himself yet again inside a trap barrier. There must be a bloody way to detect these barriers before I get pulled in by them.

You have entered a barrier owned by someone much stronger than you.
You must defeat said owner or be granted permission to be able to exit.

He found himself inside what must have been a copy of Wentworth’s classroom; it was as immaculately clean just like she prefers to keep it. He soon discovered the obvious difference; every desk and chair was entirely made out of wood. This puzzled John; he felt as if he was looking through a window into the past.

He was still taking in the rest of the room inside the barrier when he finally noticed that he wasn’t alone. Three short humanoid creatures were inside it with him and they were trying, with no avail, to open the door that John knew would have led to Mrs. Wentworth’s office in the real world. They were dressed in some weird, shabby clothes and, as John studied them further, they each were also wearing leather armor and had a sheathed sword at their side. One of the creatures spotted John and got the other two to notice him.

“Well well, what do we have here?” The shortest of them looked at him inquiringly.

“It’s obvious, ain’t it? Fresh meat!” the one to the left answered and smiled widely showing two rows of white sharp teeth. He started to advance on what he thought was his new prey.

“Hold on a second, Fithrim,” said the first one as he put his arm in front of his more aggressive companion, somehow stopping his advance. “This one might have the information we need.”

“Who are you?” John asked them not sure if he should ready himself for a confrontation.

“We are what you humans call Bauchans, laddy. We are here on a quest for me to prove my worth to my tribe.” He considered John some more and then smiled as he came to a realization. “What a coincidence, it’s the kid I saw earlier. The human who somehow foiled my attempt to steal from. And now I know why ya were able to do it.”

“Wait, you were the one inside that bush?”

“Aye, I was. Ya must have some powers in ya, it’s the only reason as to why ya knew I was there. I was going to use ya as practice for my main quest.” He licked his lips overjoyed. “And now, ya being here is very convenient for us. Only a student of the Witch would arrive at her place when we were about to break into the room behind this door. Did she send ya?”

“The Witch?” a puzzled John answered with another question.

“Don’t ya play dumb with us! Ya are a student of this school and have powers; ya must know who she is. Tell us what we want to know. Tell us how to open this door and then how to escape this place.” The Bauchan smiled one more time and then made a promise, “We won’t harm you if you comply.”

John decided to cast observe on all three of them to determine how deep in trouble he was in.

After giving their information windows a quick read, he still felt that he needed to find out more about them; he wanted to at least know why they were here. “Interesting, you are from Scotland. Why did you choose to come all the way here for a quest?”

“Aye, we are. That last bit of information is none of your business,” Okred answered him.

“Still, it must have taken you a long time to come here,” John continued. “How did creatures such as yourselves that have a resemblance to hobgoblins-”

“How dare ya compare us with that filth?” Fithrim snarled interrupting the Gamer.

Information Updated: Never compare Bauchans to Hobgoblins

“Now ya’ve done it, laddy. I was gonna let ya live, but ya have gone and made Fithrim mad.”

The whole time this was happening, the other Bauchan, Adrang, never moved except to take a metallic flask from one of his pockets and drink from it.

“Let me just kill this fucker.” The angry Bauchan unsheathed his short sword and began to advance.

“Calm down, Fithrim. we still have to get information from him,” Okred tried to stop the bigger Bauchan. “Adrang, help me!”

All that Adrang did was take another sip.

“Fuck off!” Fithrim shoved his companion to the side. “You promised me either loot or bloodshed. Well, I choose bloodshed!”

With no one blocking his way, the angry Bauchan resumed his advance on the Gamer with his shortsword in hand. John quickly changed his gear and equipped his batons. It was lucky for him that the copied classroom had the desks and chairs, which he now decided to use to try to block the Bauchan’s path to him and his short-ranged attacks.

It wasn’t too effective, because Fithrim, quite a few times, managed to move quickly enough to get in range to attack John. On these occasions, John had to rely on his proximity sense and higher agility to react fast enough to block the incoming attacks with his batons. In a one on one versus the Bauchan, he was able to effectively defend himself, and, with every hit increasing in ****, it was obvious that the Gamer’s defensive attitude to the fight was frustrating the Bauchan. The problem was that staying in a defensive stance had a very serious drawback to his weapons, each time he blocked with his weapons, the damage being made by the sword brought the batons closer to being beyond repair. Fuck, I must think of something and quick, he thought as another attack damaged one of his batons.

John decided to position himself so that, once again, a desk was between them, but this time, his attacker had his back to the wall. He quickly stored his batons and pushed the desk with all of his strength to pin the Bauchan against the wall with it. John took advantage of his stunned opponent’s slow reaction and re-equipped his batons to do a double strike on the unprotected head of the Bauchan. Fithrim dropped his sword and fell **** on the floor. Unfortunately, the baton in his right hand broke in half during that attack and, to make matters worse, he still had to face the other two Bauchans.

“Hiccup... Good job, laddy,” Adrang finally spoke. “Good job indeed. Hiccup... Now let us see what ya can do against two of us with only one weapon left.” He took another sip of his flask. “Okred, hiccup, don’t ya dare just stand there; you wanted to prove yourself to the tribe so help me take down this human.” He tried to take another sip, but nothing came out. He turned the flask upside down and shook it trying to confirm it was empty. Getting the bad news, he exclaimed, “Bloody hell!” and threw the flask against a far wall of the classroom.

Without much of a choice, since the disgrace of not doing anything would be too much and ruin his chances of ever obtaining any possible leadership role, Okred moved towards the Gamer on the opposite side from Adrang.

Being cornered by the remaining Bauchans with each wielding their shortswords, John had little options left but to continue to fight. With his last remaining baton close to being destroyed, he stored it in his inventory and equipped his backup weapon, the small baseball bat. Now, more than ever, he would have to rely on his proximity sense to perceive incoming attacks.

First came the attack from Okred, which John managed to block quite easily with his bat. The clumsiness of the attack gave John a chance to even the odds a bit; he managed to get a hold of a desk and pushed it to **** the leader to back away while blocking the path to him. Next, Adrang attacked him from behind which the Gamer had a really hard time blocking. The drunken Bauchan continued his **** and, even though John had his attention on him, he was starting to feel overwhelmed.

Somehow, his proximity sense was reacting slower than usual to the Bauchan’s movements; it was mostly because of his higher agility that John was able to block the attacks. How the hell is this drunk bastard doing this? The possible reason dawned on him almost as soon as the Bauchan came close to him and the smell of stale beer hit him on the nose, For fuck sake! That must be it, him being drunk must be messing with my skill. I can’t perceive his attacks normally because they are too damn random due to his drunken state.

Frustrated, John tried to attack his opponent. While the bat was mid-swing towards its target, Adrang easily dodged it and landed a couple of hits on John taking away 10 HP. If that wasn’t bad enough, Okred had finally made his way around to him to get back in the action. John was cornered once again and was beginning to feel that he wouldn’t be able to get out of this in one piece.

As Adrang advanced on him, he desperately tried once again to use a desk to aide himself, but the Bauchan in a drunken rage destroyed it with his sword, leaving only a pile of broken pieces of wood in its place. “Don’t be stupid, lad, I’ll break every single furniture here if I have to.” The **** of his continued attack made John fall back; he only managed to escape from another attack by Okred due to his proximity sense and a lucky dodge.

Adrang pressed on, his prey was clearly close to being defeated, but just as he lifted his sword with both hands to strike down on him, a chair came flying out of nowhere and hit him knocking him down to the floor. He never got a chance to get back up as desks and chairs swarmed him and apparently started to stomp on him. They left his battered, broken body on the floor and advanced on shocked Okred who was too scared, by the sudden change of odds, to even move. As quickly as it had happened to Adrang, the last Bauchan left standing was set upon and his battered body was left lifeless on the floor. The animated classroom furniture did not attack John.

“What the hell happened?” came the confused voice from Fithrim as he slowly tried to get up; he somehow had just come back to consciousness and missed the massacre of his companions. “What did you do to them?” he asked as he pointed to his fallen companions. The Gamer was in too much shock to answer him.

The remaining Bauchan tried to reach for his sword while he was getting up. As his hand reached its hilt, a wooden leg kicked it to the other side of the room and then another struck him on his arm breaking it. “Fuck you!” he defiantly spoke his last words as he spat on the offending desk closest to him. Like the others before him, he was swarmed, and his broken body was left on the floor as soon as the desks and chairs finished their deed.

All threats have been defeated, but you still don’t have permission to exit the barrier.

Well, isn’t this embarrassing, I wasn’t ready for the whole shared experience calculation just yet. I’ll have to get back to you on that one.

“Well, Mr. Newman. Looks like you will have to do your assignment earlier than I thought.” Mrs. Wentworth spoke as she abruptly appeared inside the barrier. Her sudden appearance had scared him, and due to this, he hastily went into a fighting stance holding his only weapon in both hands. As soon as he raised his bat, a wooden leg knocked it off his hands.

“I am not going to hurt you, John,” his teacher said calmly, for the first time using his first name, as she picked up his bat and started walking. “Come with me, we need to talk.”