It's the Murloc Life for Me [A Warcraft Isekai]

Chapter 11: It's a Bird! It's a Plane! IT'S A WIZARD, PAGLE!

"When faced with the products of a technologically superior culture, the Blacksilt displayed none of the curiosity characteristic of emerging cultures in humanoid species."

Clopper Wizbang, Explorers' League

~ Brgllrm

I probably should have foreseen this outcome when Nat started sharing his flask. I never really noticed it before, but no one in the village seem to drink alcohol. I had just assumed that Murloc's didn't let their young drink even very low-percentage stuff like small beer, but it seems like we just never started fermenting stuff.

On the other hand, the humans of Stormwind loved their brews if what I could remember from the taverns in-game kept true. Nat had only let people drink small amounts, probably what he thought they could handle. One problem with those assumptions was that they were made with the average human as the baseline. Shockingly, murlocs are not humans. A combination of our generally smaller stature and unfamiliarity with alcohol meant a shot of whatever was in that flask went from giving a pleasant buzz to full-on inebriation.

After I had managed to coax Nat out of Cass's jaws, mostly by bribing her with an armful of fish from the village stockpile, I had to corral both him and everyone who had taken a swig from his dropped flask. That turned out to be a lot of people, as one of the elders had taken it upon himself to share the drink while Nat was distracted trying to pet Cass. Most of my evening was spent looking for any elders that wandered off and helping them back into the village.

So it was late in the morning by the time I woke up, nestled in a pile of bodies centered around the prone form of Cass. She had receded into her shell after last night's attempted consumption of Nat, either out of boredom or disappointment.

For his part, Nat had responded to the attack with grace and dignity. At least he did after I had managed to wake him up with a splash of water on his face. He said it was partially his fault for not avoiding the two-meter-tall reptile. "It just seemed like such a good idea at the time." He had said. "They were sleeping right there. I didn't want anyone to miss such a great party."

After he was fully awake and gathered up his few belongings, as well as a sizable collection of gifts the tribe had given him throughout the last evening's celebration, into his small boat, Nat sailed off. He had borrowed the boat and promised to return it yesterday, but since that obviously didn't happen, he had to get to Stormwind before they thought he died or raised his tab at the bar.

"But I'll survive. A story about last night will probably get me free drinks for a week if I tell it right." He said as he got ready to cast off from the beach.

"Don't make it too crazy. We don't want any weirdos showing up expecting to be treated like chieftains." I said as I gave the boat a push. I was giving it my all, which translated to a few centimeters of movement for the hull.

Eventually, we got the boat floating and I waved goodbye to my first human friend in this new life. It wasn't a permanent goodbye, I was sure he would return. Why wouldn't he? We had done nothing to scare him, nothing too major anyways. I would be ecstatic to meet a friendly murloc tribe if I was a human in Azeroth.

But some part of me was still sad to see him go. That irrational part of my brain that whispered worst-case scenarios had reincarnated along with me and was having a field day with Nat. What if he gets hit by a speeding carriage? What if his boat capsizes in a storm? What if he tells Stormwind and they send an army?

That last one was the most frightening. I remembered the leadership being rotten in Stormwind from my past life. A couple of my guildmates had finished a max-level quest and gave me the general rundown. It involved a dragon called Onixia infiltrating the nobles of Stormwind to do... something. My exact memory was a bit hazy. When I died it had been years since I even booted up the game, much less caught up on quests from the original release. I probably wouldn't have to deal with it, and I had no clue how I would deal with it, so I elected to ignore the problem until it became relevant.