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Weeks passed, and progress in rebuilding the town had been slow, but Andrew, alongside his goblins, repaired everything destroyed in the fight and added some things.

“Master, someone has arrived at the town.”

Victor looked across the black ocean and confirmed that Andrew, the King Ooze, was contacting him. He had given Andrew complete authority over the town on the surface as he was diligent and good at his job. Obviously, Victor checked on him now and then, but his work had been satisfactory so far.

Victor responded to the message as he had nothing better to do while watching the world go by. He had been expecting someone to either deliberately show up to the town or stumble upon it by now. Actually, the fact it took this long baffled him. Are they locking down the information about the lack of monsters in the forest? That was his current theory.

“Who had arrived at the town? The merchants guild, perhaps?” Victor responded to Andrew and awaited a response.

“A pirate.”

Victor paused. A pirate? Out of all the people to stumble upon my town in the middle of the continent, as far away from any ocean as possible is a pirate? He was utterly confused. I expected guild staff, perhaps a messenger demanding a meeting, but a lost pirate?

“Is he dangerous?” Victor asked. “Maybe he is here to cause trouble?”

“No, master. He appears to be a merchant, a very poor one. Right after arriving, he headed straight for Bob’s Inn. I believe the smell of Bob’s cooking drew him in as the ogre guards told me he was hesitant to enter at first.”

“Wait. We are using ogres to guard the gate.” Victor mentally sighed. Of course, a merchant would be terrified to enter a town guarded by zombie ogres. They were B-grade monsters with immense strength. Nobody would approach one, no matter how inviting it appeared. In fact, he was baffled at the pirate’s courage to enter anyways. Either he was desperate or had balls of steel cultivated from a life at sea. “Andrew, how do you know the man is a pirate?” Pirates had a distinct look, but one could never be too sure.

“Well…” Andrew began. “He is currently talking to Bob and is rambling about his life at sea. Also, his appearance matches that of a pirate, straggly black beard, sun-kissed skin, and that limp they all have.”

Well, Victor was convinced. The man was undoubtedly a pirate. A real pirate in the flesh. Somehow the fact a pirate showed up made it feel more like a fantasy world than magic. Although pirates did technically exist back on Earth, he much preferred the ones in the movies.

Victor hovered over to the flying platform and anchored his body to it. I still have about a week until I clear the sixtieth floor. So a little entertainment would be perfect now as Alice has gone back to sleep and Genus is busy eating the dragon’s corpse. He didn’t need to summon his avatar and waste an obscene amount of lifeforce. Instead, he peered through the eyes of Bob.

***

Garry felt extremely conflicted. In front of him was the most divine broth he had ever smelled, served in a generously big wooden bowl. The inviting broth was a murky brown filled with floating bits of meat and vegetables. Even a boiled egg was nestled in one of the edges, surrounded by leafy greens. The vapor from the broth warmed his heart, the smell blessed his nose, and the comfortable chair relaxed his muscles. Was he in heaven…or was he in hell?

The soup was like the devil’s temptation as a corrupted one, a perfectly pristine skeleton the size of a child, came to bring him a plate of well-sliced wholegrain bread to go with his meal. Everything about this town was wrong, but even if the kid was dead, child labor went against his morals.

“Hey, kid. ’ow old be ye?” Garry asked as politely as possible. The skeleton carried a knife in his other hand for whatever reason.

“Kid? My name is Bob,” Bob said in a voice so deep and gruff, Garry thought a grandpa dwarf was hiding under the table, and this was all an elaborate prank. Luckily he hadn’t had any soup in his mouth. Otherwise, he would have spat it out in shock.

“Whoa there! That ye, matey? Quite the voice ye ’ave!” Garry quickly apologized to the skeleton. Another blabberin’ skeleton, I ’eard all me life they be mindless creatures that they seek only the destruction o’ ’umanity, yet ’ere be one blabberin’ to me an’ givin’ me some jolly grub!

When Garry got stressed, he forgot the manners he learned on land and reverted to his natural ways. His kind was treated coldly by the land dwellers, so he watched his accent the best he could, but in all fifty years of his life, this was the most bizarre situation he had been in, hands down.

The skeleton self-proclaimed as Bob stared at him with his empty eye sockets, as if expecting the conversation to continue.

Garry gulped and decided to be bold and ask the question on the tip of his tongue. “If ye aren’t a kid, what be ye? Was ye always a skeleton?”

Bob strode over, his skelly feet clacking on the wooden floor. He sat opposite Garry and leaned his skull on his propped-up hand. “I am no kid, nor have I always been a skelly.” He lowered his voice as if saying a dark secret. “Actually, I used to have a magnificent beard, I tell ya. It went all the way to me knees, and the ladies worshiped it, I tell ya.”

Garry raised a brow. He was beyond skeptical that the skeleton had such an impressive beard. It was like when an old man with one eye and leg by the docks told tales of how they fought sharks to death in their youth. It may be a true tale, but the image of a disabled old man sitting before him made imagining the scene…somewhat tricky. “So ye be a dwarf? Not some little kid?”

Bob nodded sadly and then stared at the bowl of soup. “My sisters loved my cooking. Shame I can never taste again.”

Garry felt awful. He was a man with a hearty appetite for good food. He tried to think of something to offer the skeleton… He was no pirate king with a vast wealth stored away on a desert island, nor did he have magic to fix the skeleton, but he did have one idea. “Say, Bob, do ye know o’ coral reefs?”

Bob groaned in response. He’d given up on holding his head up. And now his face was mashed against the surface of the wooden table.

Garry took Bob’s groan as a no, so he continued. “Well, I met this here fascinatin’ dentist on the ’igh seas one rough winter. The crew’s teeth ’ad fallen out because the grub been too ’ard.” He watched Bob slowly raise his head, clearly more interested in the conversation. “You see, this here dentist said the coral reefs below the sea were made from the same thin’ our teeth were. So ’e retrieved some an’ made teeth from them.”

Garry chuckled at the memory and ignored his raging stomach. “We all ’ad jolly colored teeth fer months. Became a fashion trend amongst us, an’ when we landed on shore, we got called the coral gentlemen o’ fortune. It got so bad, our cap’n ’ad a beard o’ the stuff!”

Despite the lack of eyes, Garry saw a flame of hope ignite.

Garry decided to finish his tale with the funniest part of all. “They started callin’ ’im coral beard!”

Bob slammed the table and said in his gruff voice, “Where is this coral you speak of?”

Garry grinned, showing his colorful teeth hidden by his scruffy beard. “Go to the shore, lad. The sea calls yer name.”

Bob ran his fingers along his chin as he fell into contemplation. “My beard…I can get an even better one. A beard of coral, even grander than your captain’s!”

Garry closed his eyes and nodded sagely. “Aye. Jolly luck to ye, an’ thank ye lad fer listenin’ to this here old man’s tale.”

Hearing no response, he opened his eye and saw the opposite seat vacated, as if the skeleton was never there, only the still-warm broth and plate of bread evidence of his presence. Garry shrugged, glanced around the dead-silent inn, and decided to finally tuck into his meal. But right as the spoon entered his mouth, he wondered, How can I pay fer this here if the cook be gone?

With another shrug, he dug into the most glorious meal he had ever had.

***

Victor watched through Bob’s eyes as the skeleton walked out of his inn, looked both ways, and, seemingly picking a random direction, began walking.

“Where are you going?” he asked inside Bob’s head.

The skeleton didn’t even falter in his stride as he resolutely answered. “To reclaim what I lost.”

Victor mulled over Bob’s words. A part of him wanted Bob to stay in Necron under his thumb. Bob was a great cook and would be a good source of income once the town opened up. But another part of him felt…bad. Bob didn’t deserve what happened to him. He didn’t ask for any of this. Victor was the one who killed him, brought him back to life, stripped him of his identity, and reduced him to a depressed cook in a customer-less inn.

Victor watched as Bob left the gates, took a right, and began heading southwest. He had no plans to stop the determined skeleton. In fact, maybe this would be a chance for him to see more of the outside world through the eyes of Bob.

“Call me if you need anything,” were his final words as he cut the connection. He needed to hire a new chef and knew just the pirate for the job.