Well, you don't have much to attack with. Say hello?

She was clothed in a loose, flowy dress and was carrying a thin steel rod topped with a small gold sphere on the end. Her brown hair was long and wavy, once she patted it back into place after the branch. The only other stitch of clothing she seemed to be wearing were thigh high brown leather boots, the tops of which landed just at the edge of her dress hem.

Muttering to herself, she looked frustrated and agitated. Not a good thing in Adventurers. As she picked her way through the clearing, stopping at one point to pull a twig from her hair and adjust the loose shoulder straps of her dress, you realized she also looked hurt. The scrapes and small cuts on her bare arms, face and upper chest spoke of more than a rough time walking through the woods, and she finally got close enough for you to examine.

Adrianne Weatherbough, Level 7 Warlock
Hero, Human, Active, Explicit

Her health bar was hovering around half.

She was... ****? It was hard to say, really. Any other day, besides yesterday you guessed, even with her injured you would have backed away. She was too potentially deadly to bother with, especially after you had already used one of your two spells for the day on Purify Food and Drink. What were the chances you could kill her with one Thunderclap?

Ok, what were the chances when she wasn't perfectly positioned between you and a cliff edge?

She hadn't seen you yet, and you felt like you could just stay still and silent and she would certainly walk right by.

Thoughts of Gaela were still in your head though. Not of the fucking, though. Well, not specifically the fucking. It was how, even though she was an Adventurer and you were a monster, she had... come around? She'd talked to herself like this one was, but she had also talked to you. Her raspy voice making whispered promises in your ear. And you knew it hadn't been the Charm - it had been the Adventurer herself.

Not all Adventurers were mindless killers.

You weren't going to attack. But this was an opportunity, and yesterday had proven you should not ignore opportunities. If you weren't going to attack, and you weren't going to let her walk on by, what other options did you have?

"Hey there, friend," you said, trying your best to smile.

The Warlock literally jumped, you had taken her by such surprise. She raised her rod in both hands as if she were going to swing it like a club, looking around wildly until she finally spotted you next to the bush, sitting on the stump.

"I see you aren't doing so great right now. It's not much, but you could have some of my food if you want. It's raw, but I Purified it so it should still help with your health situation."

She was frozen, eyes boring into you and then darting around the rest of the treeline. Slowly, she lowered her rod and cocked her head to the side. "Um... yeah. That would actually be... great..." she said. Her walk over to you was cautious, like a skittish woodland critter. You pulled another piece of Purified Raw Goat Meat out of your inventory and held it out to her.

"Thanks," she said, taking it and frowning as the meat squished between her fingers.

You shuffled over as far as you could on the big stump and patted the space next to you, still trying your damndest to smile disarmingly.

"You're welcome," you said, then took a small bite of your own meat. "Sorry about the rawness, but I haven't gotten the chance to make a fire yet."

"That's alright," she said. She sat, legs pressed together and back upright, and took her own small bite. "Where, uh, did you get the goat meat?"

You nodded at the cliff face. "Up the mountain. There's some wild goat herds about halfway up. They can be feisty, but a guy's gotta eat."

"Huh," she said thoughtfully, taking another bite of the meat. Slowly her health bar was growing, inch by inch as she chewed the food.

"So..." you said, not sure where to go from there. "Looks like you ran into some trouble. Anything I should be worried about?"

"Fucking Goblins," she groaned, her next bite out of the meat more solid this time and less mincing. "They chased me for like, an hour. Kept screaming 'clammy cry!' at me, like I was supposed to know what that meant. I killed maybe a dozen of them and they still wouldn't leave off. I finally lost them when I jumped a river and used my last Thunderclap spell to knock the fallen tree I used as a platform into the water." She stopped chewing, having been talking around her mouthful of meat, and glanced at you. "Uh, I probably shouldn't have told you that."

"About your last spell?" you asked, and then shrugged. "I've only got one left today myself. Used the other on Purifying this meat."

"So... what are you doing out here?" Adrianne asked you.

"Well," you hesitated, then shrugged, nodding at the cliff face again. "A few Adventurers were being weird and jumping off of that cliff yesterday like buffoons. I figured I would come check to see if there were any more doing it. No luck yet."

"Oh, that," she said. "Yeah, I doubt you'll find anyone else doing that any more. They pulled it from the wiki, everyone knows it's fake now and anyone who hadn't heard about it never will."

"Well, damn," you sighed. "Guess that means it's back to punching trees."

"Uh, why?"

"Only way I can get some decent firewood," you said.

"Yeah but why are you punching them?"

"How else am I supposed to get firewood?"

Her brow furrowed and she wiped meat juice from her chin with one forearm. "Uh, with an axe?"

"Oh, yeah. I guess. I don't have one though."

"What? Why not? You can get a basic axe for like five copper pieces."

Now it was your turn to furrow your brow. "From where?"

"Literally any basic trade merchant or shop."

You looked around at the forest.

"Oh," she said. "Right. You're a monster in a forest, no shops around here."

"Wouldn't help if there was, I don't have five copper pieces either."

"Huh. You know, you don't act like any other monster I've run into so far. I played Shards a long time ago and I don't remember ever sitting and eating Purified food with a Bugbear then either."

You shrugged. "Up until the whole thing with Adventurers jumping off of cliffs yesterday, I probably wouldn't have offered you any either."

"Kind of a life changing thing, then?" she asked.

"Yeah, something like that."

She was staring at you now, and you realized she'd eaten her entire piece of meat and her HP bar was filled except for just the very end of it. Oh, it's that time I guess. Bye-bye, wood and goat meat.

Adrianne the Warlock stood up, hands on her hips and one eyebrow raised as she studied you.

"I need to ask you a question and I want you to be truthful," she said.

"Sure," you said. "I can do that."

She folded her arms over her chest and pouted her lips for a moment, stewing on whatever she wanted to ask.

"Are- are you the Bugbear who Fucks?"

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