Wrestle Kingdom Input Poll (Patreon)

A bit of a hop ahead in the story here to get some input. Got a few pages to put ahead of this, but this is the real decision at hand; the girls need to grind, and how do they do it? Fighting weaklings, challenging strong enemies, or finding a method of glitching it out? Some more details down in the selection here, but let the patron votes count!

With their quest tracker updated, Manda and Mollie went marching off to the north. Even Mollie was happy to get out of the muddy swamp, reaching the generic clearings of Wrestle Kingdom. They followed their quest marker along the road until there was an obnoxious buzzing sound. Manda blinked in surprise just before her face ran right into an invisible wall.

“The fuck?!” she demanded, backing off and rubbing her nose.

A booth popped out of the ground, barely as tall as she was. A little barrier arm was lowered next to it, making a rather token effort to block her path that somehow seemed to be working.

“Sorry, but you can’t get into this area.”

Manda didn’t even see the owner of the voice until a halfling popped up from the booth, leaning on the counter. She wore a visor over some thick red curls, the 3-foot pudgy humanoid chewing noisily on some gum.

“Why the hell not? We’ve got like… destiny shit up there!” Manda argued.

“Maybe we uh… need more information here,” Mollie offered sheepishly. “Um, why can’t we pass? We have permission from the Wrestle Witch and Princess Plex, soooo…”

The halfling looked at them dismissively. “Can’t let ya through.”

“Why not?” Manda pressed impatiently.

“Not strong enough. Ya need to be Level 5 or better to get in here.”

“Come ON! I just beat up two dumbass monkeys and fought everything I had to (and MORE) to get here! How can I possibly-?”

The halfling produced what looked like a pricing gun and clicked it at Manda. Her stat block appeared in a wall of text and numbers in midair, with a blinking Level 2 making her point. Manda growled as the halfling scanned Mollie, bringing up a much larger set of numbers with a Level 21 marked on hers. The squat woman whistled.

“Wow. Nice. But since you’re acting as a party, I’ll need you all to be 5 or higher. Try winning some matches for once, red.”

“This’ such bullshit! How do you all expect me to get any better when you’re all beating me ass while you railroad me through all this stupid quest shit!?”

The halfling turned to her looking mildly surprised.

“Oh? If that’s the problem, I can help you with that.”

She pressed some button underneath her booth’s desk. There was a twinkling sound as a text message appeared between them.

“Free Mode opened! You may now explore Wrestle Kingdom off the required trail!”

The halfling nodded casually.

“There ya go. The path’s mostly to make sure new faces don’t get too lost. Now if you were looking for levels, you got a few choices.”

“Let me guess. Three of them?” Manda muttered.

“You got it. So out west there, you’ll find the Jobba Jobba Islands. It’s full of weaklings and smaller enemies you can carve through. Easy battles, low experience kinda place.”

The halfling pointed the other way.

“Now going east, there’s R'uhl L'romle.”

“There’s WHAT?” Manda pressed at the vaguely French or Italian-sounding word.

“R'uhl L'romle. It’s the homeland of the wrestle elves. You’ll find a lot of strong opponents there, but they won’t make winning easy. One victory, though, and you’ll easily get past Level 5.”

Manda shuddered. Her recent run-in with the buff wrestle elves was still fresh in her memory. Mollie was squirming excitedly, of course.

“Then again, a little more south from them, there’s the ring dwarves.”

Manda looked puzzled at the word. “I uh… that’s a new one to me.”

“They’re crafters, mostly. Make a lot of the items and gear you find at the weapon shops,” Mollie filled in for her.

“Right. But high in The Macho Mountains, the most mad of ring dwarves tinker with strange and powerful methods using tools banned by their homelands. They’ve talked about finding some kind of insects or twitches or something… part of a speeding run…”

Manda’s eyes immediately lit up.

“Speed run? Did you mean bugs and glitches?!” she pressed eagerly.

“Yea, yea. Something like that,” the halfling shrugged. “They supposedly were working on something that would wrestle past any barrier or somethin’ like that. I didn’t bother talking to the whackos for long myself. I barely trust ‘em to build the rings that pop up everywhere.”

The shortstack took out a newspaper and leaned back as she started to read.

“But not my problem. Come on back whenever you’ve got the levels.”

The halfling stopped even listening to them as she left the two fighters to themselves.

“I mean obviously the glitchy dwarf ladies, right?” Manda asked Mollie.

“They sound like gamers to me. They might even get us out of the game themselves!”

“That sounds pretty risky,” Molle flinched. “Do we WANT to go to weirdos who could break a game when we’re still in it? Why don’t we just go wrestle the wrestle elves? They sound like fun!”

The latina girl smiled hopefully and Manda flinched.

“Maybe take it easy… if anything, I’d want the losers on the island so we can play it safe,” the thinner gamer offered.

“Hope you don’t mind wrestling a few dozen wrestle imps in the process,” the halfling commented.

Manda gave another annoyed growl.

“I swear, if somebody says the word ‘wrestle’ one more time, I’m gonna…”

“Wrestle them?” Mollie offered.

Manda turned around and punched her in the stomach. Mollie huffed and doubled over with the wind knocked out of her, but her face slowly warped into a delighted smile.

“Thank you,” she squeaked before crumbling to her knees.

There was another alert noise as the chat popped up, listing the options in front of them. Manda sighed and rolled her head back.

“Ooooof course,” she groaned as the chat started to vote on her destiny.