He Who Fights with Monsters (He Who Fights with Monsters, #1)

by Shirtaloon

“I think I might hate this place.”

“It’s like a Mennonite made some hammer pants. Did I wake up in 1991 rural Pennsylvania?”

Jason was not happy with his options. A quest with the explicit objective of ‘don’t die’ wasn’t great, but wandering blindly through a maze with cannibals roaming about struck him as an even worse option.

“Well, if you’re only going to complete one quest objective, ‘don’t die’ is a winner.”

Do I have a snarky user interface?

What does that collar do exactly?” “It suppresses all essence abilities,” Gary said. “Some race powers too, but not all of them.” “Does it suppress you from being a huge guy who can kick the crap out of people?” A grin Jason could only describe as predatory crossed Gary’s leonine face. “No, it doesn’t.”

“The way you made them disregard you as a threat by appearing weak and harmless,” Gary praised. “Feeble and helpless, even touched in the head a little. It was masterful how impotent you came across. Even after you kept escaping from the cage, they had no respect for you as a threat whatsoever.” “Please stop complimenting me,” Jason said.

Jason looked at the three of them looking back at him. They clearly had no idea of the magnitude to which he was out of his depth.

“No one will mind if you drain some health out of a guy that stabbed you. As long as you don’t drink his blood to do it anyway. When you raid the local cemetery, though? No one wants their dead family members shambling into town as part of your undead army.”

He ruled out crawling under the monster because it would involve crawling under a monster.

“We’re slowly phasing it out in favour of wealth-based oligarchy, but it’s still around.”

“Well,” Jason said, “since the gods are apparently real, here, I feel like I should be waving the flag for secular morality.” “Friend, the gods are real everywhere.” “That’s what people keep telling me.”

“Submarine subways,” he murmured to himself, shaking his head in disbelief. “I love magical cities.”

“Should it be where people aren’t sick enough, or where they aren’t impoverished enough?” “He does have a point,” Farrah said. “Who looks at the poor and sick and tells them they aren’t poor and sick enough?” “The Church of the Healer, from what I've heard,” Jason said darkly.

Does everyone there shave their eyebrows?” “I didn’t shave them,” Jason said. “I lost them.” “How do you lose your eyebrows?” “It’s been an odd couple of weeks.”

“Could you take this at least a little seriously?” Rufus asked. “I’m about to learn magic kung fu, so… probably not.”

“When you’re just a face in the crowd, then you can hold an ideal without being required to live up to it. But here, my decisions can be life and death.

“We’re not trying to make you kill people,” Farrah said. “We just want to prepare you for the inevitable. You make it sound like we’re drugging random strangers, stashing them in a hidden location, handing you a large axe and locking you up with them, promising not to let you out until one of you is dead.” “That was weirdly specific and detailed.” “Shut up and meditate.”

“You seem very easy with blasphemy,” the man said warily. “I am,” Jason said absently. “Mostly to annoy my Aunt Marjory, but also recreationally.

“So that’s a god,” Jason said. “Honestly, I was hoping to be less impressed, but that is something to see. So much for atheism, I guess.”

“I’m not very smart and simple formalities are super-hard to figure out. It’s definitely not that I find them to be a set of arbitrary behavioural norms that serve as a tool of exclusionary tribalism and that eschewing the rituals of cultural performance facilitates the fostering of new relationships by having both sides step out of their preconceived societal modes.”

“I just don’t want you to think learning martial arts from a book will magically make you good at fighting.” “That’s a disappointment,” Jason said, “given its literal purpose is to magically make me good at fighting.”

“I’m just not rushing this,” Jason said. “It’s a big moment for me. I’ll probably go the full Keanu.”

I know kung-fu

“That’s what I like about you, Jason,” he said. “You don’t pretend that what we do doesn’t affect us.”

“Friends don’t count favours, Rufus. They just show up when they’re needed.”

Someone like Thadwick isn’t inherently evil, but he’s part of a system that tells him he deserves more than other people, just for being born.

She’s a priestess in training, with the God of Knowledge. Goddess, whatever. Deities are gender fluid, as it turns out. Heard that from the Goddess of Knowledge herself, direct quote.

Oh yeah, I found religion, which is kind of a big deal. I didn’t join, but I found it. It seems fine; not for me but who knows? Maybe there’s a god of delicious sandwiches.

An interesting fact about the Goddess of Knowledge is that she knows everything that anyone in this world knows, including me. Which means she knows a bunch of Mario Kart shortcuts, which is kind of awesome.”

“I may have been spending some time with Cassandra. Socially.” “I didn’t think she had much time for young men,” Humphrey said. “Of course she does,” Jason said. “She just doesn’t have time for boys.”

“What happened to bros before hoes?” Jason called out over the blasting air of the propulsion ring. “I don’t know what that means,” Humphrey called back, “but it feels like I should respect you less for having said it.” “That’s fair,” Jason said.

Inside joke. 👍 the author has no idea how funny this line is.