Chapter 54: The Hero’s Celebration (Or What Was Left of It)

The tavern inside the [Silver Dragon's Golden Dawn] Guild was supposed to be one of the most exclusive, high-end places in Oakhaven. It was one of the places where even SSS-Rank adventurers drank vintage elven wine and boasted about slaying dragons.

Tonight, however, the VIP booth in the back felt more like the waiting room of a bankrupt dentistry clinic.

Nick sat at the head of the heavy oak table, surrounded by half-empty mugs of premium ale. The rest of the tavern was raucous, filled with patrons raising their glasses to the "Hero" who had just returned victorious. Bards were already tuning their lutes to compose ballads about his unseen battle at the border.

But inside the booth, the silence was deafening.

Nick stared blankly at his reflection in a pool of spilled beer. His legendary armor felt heavy, suffocating. Every time someone in the tavern cheered his name, he flinched, expecting the sky to flash red and fine him another fifty thousand gold coins.

"ALL HAIL HERO NICK! FOR HIS GLORY AND HIS BENEVOLENCE! HAIL NICK!" One Lizard-Man adventurer shouted, raising his drink.

"To... to victory," Nick mumbled, weakly raising his mug.

Egel, sitting across from him, didn't raise her glass. She was aggressively stabbing a piece of roasted boar with her fork. She looked at Nick, then looked away, her jaw clenched. "Yeah. Victory. Sure boss. We totally showed that... empty paved road who's boss."

Lucretia was nervously adjusting her round glasses, her eyes darting around the tavern. She had spent the last hour mentally calculating the cost of the drinks Nick was ordering, comparing it to the depleted funds in their guild account.

"Sir Nick," Lucretia began, her voice trembling slightly. "Are you sure we should be spending this much? I mean, with the... the fine... and we don't have any new monster cores to sell..."

"I said we are celebrating!" Nick snapped, his voice cracking with a terrifying, fragile edge. He slammed his mug on the table, spilling more ale. "I am the Chosen Hero! The Kingdom will reimburse me! I saved them from... from..."

He couldn't even finish the sentence. He couldn't say Kaitoyama's name without the magical NDA burning against his wrist. He choked on his own words, taking a desperate gulp of ale to wash down the bile in his throat.

"...FROM EVIL!" He shouted, pretending to be 'happy'.

Egel sighed, dropping her fork. "Where is Luna? She usually loves the roasted boar here."

"She said she was tired," Nick muttered defensively. "Elves are sensitive creatures. She just needs sleep."

But Nick knew that wasn't true. He had seen the look in the dark elf's eyes before she turned her back on him at the city gates, and even an idiot like him could notice that it wasn't exhaustion. Instead, it was absolute, unadulterated contempt.

Suddenly, the ambient, cheerful noise of the tavern fractured.

"I'm telling you, the Hero was too soft!" a burly, scarred warrior bellowed from a nearby table, slamming his heavy fist down and sloshing beer everywhere. "That Kaitoyama bastard outraged the Saintess! He should have been publicly executed in the square, not forgiven! Mercy is for the weak!"

"You don't understand the nuance of righteousness, you uncultured meathead!" a rogue in sleek leather armor shouted back, aggressively shoving the warrior's shoulder. "That's exactly why Sir Nick is the Chosen One! He showed absolute, divine mercy to a pathetic, lonely adventurer. It's the ultimate flex of the Light! It proves our moral superiority!"

"Superiority my foot! I bet that Kaitoyama was just crying to save his own skin and that Nick fell right into his trap! And you are a complete asshole to think that he did the right thing!" He said, stomping his foot on the floor.

"Take that back, or I'll cut you into perfect pieces, you fat ass." The rogue replied, preparing his daggers.

While the two adventurers escalated from aggressive shoving to drawing daggers, a third figure walked right between them. He was a quintessential, brooding edgelord—wrapped in a tattered black cloak, half his face covered by a scarf, with dual katanas strapped to his back. He completely ignored the brewing violence, marching straight up to the guild counter where Elara, the receptionist, was tiredly polishing a glass.

"Guild Girl," the edgelord rasped, his voice artificially deepened to sound tragic and mysterious. "Give me quests about dragons. The highest rank you have. They burned my village. They killed my family. My soul is a tempest of vengeance. I must exterminate every last winged lizard in this miserable world."

Elara didn't even blink. She pulled a cheap piece of parchment from under the counter and slid it toward him with the deadpan exhaustion of a retail worker on a double shift. "The dragons are currently migrating for mating season. The best I can do is a quest to clear giant magical rats from the brewery basement. Three silver coins. Take it or leave it, 'Dragonbane'."

Behind the brooding adventurer, the ideological debate about Nick's mercy officially tipped over the edge.

The warrior threw a wild, drunken punch. The rogue ducked. The punch connected squarely with the jaw of a passing dwarven cleric, and within three seconds, the entire tavern descended into a textbook, cliché anime brawl. Wooden chairs were shattered over heads, low-level spells fizzled harmlessly against the ceiling, and someone was already trying to swing from a chandelier that clearly couldn't support their weight.

"Ah... it always ends like this," Egel sighed, quietly drinking her beer.

Through the chaos, a half-full, heavy wooden mug of cheap ale sailed through the air in a perfect parabolic arc.

SMACK.

It hit Egel squarely in the side of the head, splashing lukewarm, sticky beer all over her red hair and trickling down her face.

The brawler froze. A terrifying, pulsing vein appeared on her forehead.

"Who... threw... that?" she growled, her fists clenching so tight her knuckles turned white.

"E-Egel, please, don't get involved!" Lucretia panicked, scrambling to stand up from the booth to cast a pacifying barrier. "We can't afford to pay for tavern damages! Remember the au—"

Before the clumsy mage could finish her sentence, her boot caught on a thick puddle of spilled ale. With a high-pitched, comical shriek, Lucretia's feet flew out from under her and crashed face-first onto the sticky floor, her round glasses skidding away under a table, her robes tangling around her legs in a spectacularly undignified display.

"Ah!! My glasses! I can't see anything!!" The poor mage exclaimed.

"I'M GOING TO BREAK EVERY BONE IN THIS ROOM!" Egel roared, diving headfirst into the chaotic melee. Her hands ignited with swirling, violent blue Chi, illuminating the dimly lit tavern like a police siren.

She didn't just join the brawl; she became a natural disaster.

Meanwhile, Nick was still sitting at his place, completely ignoring everything.

Egel grabbed the burly warrior who had started the ideological debate by his heavy iron breastplate and effortlessly suplexed him through a solid oak dining table. Splinters and half-eaten turkey legs flew everywhere.

"WHO THREW THAT FUCKIN' BEER?!" Egel screamed, her pent-up frustration from the humiliating tollbooth encounter and the acoustic paladin finally boiling over.

A drunken Orc tried to swing a stool at her from behind. Egel didn't even look. Instead, she executed a perfect, spinning back-kick that sent the Orc flying across the room, crashing directly into the tavern's dartboard.

"THIS IS FOR MY UNPAID OVERTIME!" Egel yelled, delivering a glowing uppercut to a bewildered paladin.

SMASH.

"AND THIS IS FOR THE LACK OF DENTAL COVERAGE!" She grabbed a rogue by the ankles and used him to sweep the legs of three other adventurers.

Meanwhile, completely oblivious to the hurricane of violence erupting directly behind him, the "Dragon Slayer" edgelord remained leaning against the guild counter.

A dwarven cleric flew past his head, crashing into the shelf of premium liquors behind the bar with a deafening shatter of glass.

The edgelord didn't even flinch. He just leaned in closer to Elara, narrowing his visible eye to look as intense and tortured as possible.

"I do not care about mutated rats," he rasped, his voice dripping with dramatic angst. "My blades thirst for the blood of the Ancient Wyrms. The ones who scorched the heavens. Do you not understand my pain, guild girl? The ashes of my village demand a scaled sacrifice."

Elara let out a long, exhausted sigh. She calmly reached out and picked a sharp splinter of wood out of her hair, completely ignoring the rogue who was currently unconscious on the floor next to her boots.

"Look, 'Dragonbane'," Elara said in a deadpan, retail-worker monotone. "The giant rats in the brewery basement have ingested fermented fire-pepper mash. When they burp, it's slightly warm. Pretend they're tiny, furry, wingless dragons. It pays three silver coins and comes with a coupon for a free bowl of stew. Take the quest, or I'm calling the guards for loitering."

"My tragic backstory and immense pain cannot be bought with stew!" the edgelord hissed, slamming a gloved hand on the counter. "Give me an S-Rank Dragon! GIVE ME DRAGONS!"

"Take the rats or get out," Elara replied, pulling out a rag to wipe up the spilled ale on the counter.

Down on the sticky floor, Lucretia was still blindly crawling through the forest of shuffling, fighting boots.

"I found them! Wait... no, this is a pretzel," the clumsy mage whimpered, tossing a soggy piece of bread aside. "Please stop stepping on my robes! I am a senior member of the Hero's party! Ow! That's my hand!"

Back in the center of the room, Egel was officially unstoppable. She had a half-orc in a headlock and was actively using him as a human shield against a barrage of poorly aimed low-level fireballs. "COME ON! IS THAT ALL YOU'VE GOT?!" she roared, her red hair wild, her blue eyes blazing with misdirected corporate rage. "I'VE SURVIVED AN HR AUDIT AND FOUGHT A MONSTER WITH DEADLY MENSTRUAL CRAMPS!! YOU, IDIOTS, ARE NOTHING!"

And through all of this—the screaming, the shattering wood, the flying bodies, his mage crying on the floor, and his brawler dismantling half the local guild roster—Nick did absolutely nothing.

He didn't flare his [Heroic Aura] to command peace. He didn't draw his sword to separate the fighters. He didn't even reach down to help Lucretia find her glasses.

Nick just sat there at the head of the VIP table, completely dead inside. A stray, low-level magic missile fizzled against his legendary pauldron, lightly singeing his blonde hair. Nick didn't even react. He slowly lifted his mug of premium ale to his lips, staring blankly into the chaotic void of the tavern, wishing with every fiber of his being that he could just fade out of existence.

"To... to the hero..." he whispered.

No one raised their glass. No one cheered. The tavern was still lost in its own chaos, fighting over a truth none of them understood.

Nick set the mug down. It clinked against the wooden table—a soft, lonely sound.

He didn't order another drink and didn't even call for the bill.

He just sat there in the noise completely, utterly alone.

Outside, the moon rose over Oakhaven. And somewhere far beyond the border, in a fortress lit by neon mana lights, a skeleton in rubber gloves polished a spoon and thought about his Master.

Scrik-scrik.

The world kept turning.

Nick kept drinking.

And nothing was the same.

The brawl eventually burned itself out, less because of any heroic intervention and more because Egel had simply run out of conscious bodies to throw.

The burly warrior was draped over a shattered chandelier, the rogue was folded neatly inside a smashed barrel of cheap mead, and the "Dragon Slayer" had begrudgingly accepted a minor dragon slaying quest after being accidentally hit in the face by a flying turkey leg.

Elara, the exhausted receptionist, calmly walked over to the VIP booth, stepping over a groaning dwarven cleric. She slammed a piece of parchment down in front of Nick. It was a receipt so long it rolled off the table and pooled on the sticky floor.

"Four thousand, two hundred gold coins," Elara said flatly. "For the premium ale, the roasted boar, three shattered oak tables, the dartboard, and the emotional damages to my remaining sanity."

Nick didn't argue. He didn't invoke his divine mandate or complain. He didn't have the energy. With trembling, numb fingers, he authorized the guild transfer, watching a huge chunk of his remaining, non-tax-evaded savings vanish into the ether.

"The church will pay for me." He muttered, his voice barely a whisper.

The walk back to the Royal Palace was a procession of pure, unadulterated misery.

The moon hung high over Oakhaven, casting long, mocking shadows across the pristine cobblestones. The day had passed too rapidly. (In reality, the System had just adjusted the time, since the tavern event was supposed to happen at night and not at sunrise.)

Egel walked a few paces behind Nick, a blossoming purple bruise forming around her left eye and a split lip that she kept dabbing with her leather sleeve. Despite the physical beating, her posture was slightly more relaxed—the corporate rage had been temporarily punched out of her system. But the hollow, directionless look in her blue eyes remained.

Lucretia, on the other hand, was an absolute disaster. She had finally retrieved her glasses from under a table, but the left lens was spider-webbed with cracks. Without her depth perception, the clumsy mage had devolved into a walking hazard.

"Oof!" Lucretia squeaked, tripping over a perfectly flat cobblestone and face-planting directly into Nick’s armored back. "S-Sorry, Sir Nick! The ground just... jumped! My depth perception is entirely ruined..."

Nick didn’t respond. He didn't offer a hand to steady her or a reassuring smile. He just kept walking, dragging the tip of his Holy Sword behind him with a depressing, continuous scraaaaape that echoed through the empty streets.

When they finally reached the towering, golden gates of the Royal Palace, the royal guards saluted them crisply, striking their halberds against the ground in a show of profound respect.

"Welcome back, Chosen One!" the captain of the guard proclaimed brightly. "Rest well! The Kingdom sleeps safely because of you!"

The words felt like physical daggers twisting in his gut.

Nick forced a stiff, agonizing nod and trudged past them. He didn't say goodnight to Egel or check on Lucretia's bruises. He just walked down the lavish, velvet-lined corridors until he reached his extravagant hero’s suite.

He pushed the heavy oak doors open, stepped inside, and let them click shut behind him.

He was finally alone. There were no cameras from the Higher Realms here. No adoring crowds and no screaming tavern brawlers.

Nick slowly unbuckled his legendary breastplate, letting the priceless artifact fall to the marble floor with a heavy, hollow thud. He sank to the edge of his massive, silk-sheeted canopy bed.

He then looked down at his right wrist, where the invisible ink of the Non-Disclosure Agreement pulsed with a faint, mocking golden light.

The poor Nick had lost a fortune: he had lost his dignity, and he also felt that he had lost the respect of his party. He was the most famous man in the world, and now he was officially reduced to being nothing more than a hostage to a corporate spreadsheet.

The Chosen Hero of the Kingdom of Light leaned forward, burying his face in his trembling, scarred hands. And there, in the absolute, suffocating silence of the Royal Palace, his shoulders began to shake as he finally allowed the hot, humiliating tears of total defeat to fall.

"I... will kill that man. I must." He whispered into the pillow.

That was a promise.

[Higher Realms Live Chat]

NTR_Lover69: "Bro. BRO. Nick is in the VIP booth, surrounded by fans, and he's drinking alone while his party falls apart. Egel is suplexing people over unpaid overtime. Lucretia is randomly picking pretzels off the floor. Luna already bounced. The 'Hero' just watched his whole harem collapse in real time and did NOTHING. This is the most beautiful trainwreck I've ever seen. #NTR #GetCuckedNick" 🍿

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CorporateSlave42: "Egel screaming 'THIS IS FOR MY UNPAID OVERTIME' while suplexing a warrior through a table is the most relatable thing I've ever read. She's not fighting for glory. She's fighting for LABOR RIGHTS. Also, Nick just spent 4,200 gold on drinks he can't afford and had to authorize the transfer with 'trembling, numb fingers'. The IRS broke him. Beautiful. #GetCuckedNick" 📊

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GoonerKing: "The edgelord asking for S-Rank dragons and Elara offering him rats and stew is literally me every time I try to find a good quest in a new MMO. 'My tragic backstory cannot be bought with stew!' — sir, this is a Wendy's. Also, Nick crying alone in his room while Larry polishes a spoon somewhere else is the ultimate contrast. One king fell. Another rose. #CringeLord" 💀

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Larry_Simp_01: "Nick is crying in his room. Larry is polishing a spoon. The world kept turning. NOTHING WAS THE SAME. This is poetry. I want this on a poster. Also, Egel using a half-orc as a human shield against fireballs while screaming about surviving an HR audit is the most metal thing I've ever read. #GetCuckedNick" 👍

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Cultivator_Lover: "Lucretia crawling on the floor, finding a pretzel instead of her glasses, and getting her robes stepped on by a brawling mob... that's the most accurate depiction of being a mage in a bar fight I've ever seen. Meanwhile, Nick is just sitting there, dead inside, letting a magic missile singe his hair. The Hero's party isn't a party anymore. It's a support group for trauma survivors. #NTR" 🍿

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SystemAdmin: "⚠️ NOTICE: Protagonist 'Nick' has been flagged for severe morale deficiency. Heroic Aura output reduced by 67%. Suggested action: 'Consume alcohol' has been attempted. Results: Insufficient. Further action required. Meanwhile, 'Egel' has been flagged for 'Workplace Rage'. 'Lucretia' has been flagged for 'Depth Perception Failure'. 'Luna' has been flagged for 'AWOL'. The party is officially in critical condition. #GetCuckedNick" 🔥