Swapped With The Barmaid I (Youtube)

Samuel stepped foot in Helverse Town again after nearly a month of traveling for a quest he had agreed to undertake. The quest was to travel nearly three hundred miles to the “Forest of Fear” and slay the wicked witch who had made a home inside it.

The forest is quite the ways away from town, and it seems like a witch living there wouldn’t be a problem, but the Helverse Town only has one road coming to it, which passes right next to the forest. That meant that all merchants had to pass by it on their way here from the main kingdom.

Because of that, the witch would often steal things from the merchants and sometimes even curse them for fun. That caused most of the merchants to stop traveling here, which was bad for the town that needed to buy their supplies.

So, in order to save their town, the people pooled their money together and put out a quest request at the kingdom's adventures guild. That’s how Samuel got the job, and he set out immediately from Helverse in order to take the witch down.

Most of his adventure had been walking; fighting the witch was actually surprisingly easy. Samuel caught her by surprise, and in one fell swoop, she was in two pieces. Samuel claimed a trophy from her in order to use it as proof he succeeded and made his way back to Helverse.

As soon as he was back, the townsfolk noticed his trophy, and they started cheering and calling him a hero. Samuel brought the head to the town elder and presented it, telling him and the folks around that the witch would bother them no longer.

The town elder was pleased and gave Samuel his reward. A nice heavy bag of gold coins. Samuel thanked the elder, and the first thing he did was head over to the tavern to get a drink and perhaps find someone to share his new wealth with, at least for the night.

As soon as he sat down, a short red-haired woman came right over. She was wearing a typical waitress outfit but looked great in it, even if it was a mess from working all day. She smiled and poured Samuel a free drink, saying the first one was free for the town hero.

Samuel smiled and quickly drank it up, then he placed a few gold on the table and told her to keep them coming. He then waited for the woman to try and grab the gold so that he could grab her hand and tell her that he also wouldn’t mind seeing her more as the night went on.

It was supposed to be some simple flirting, but as soon as he touched the woman's hand, something crazy happened. A burst of bright light came from where their hands touched, and Samuel could feel that some sort of magic was cast.

The moment after that felt weird. Samuel couldn’t see anything, but she was positive something was different about her. When the light vanished, Samuel found herself staring right at, well, herself. Right in front of her was her body, sitting there like it had before.

Samuel tilted her head and asked what happened, only to watch as her old body looked down confused as well. After a minute of silence, things got worse for Samuel, as her old body suddenly looked up at the bag of gold next to him.

He started to laugh and grabbed it. Samuel was shocked and told him to put her money down. However, her old body simply got up and ran out of the tavern. Samuel, still having no clue what was going on, tried to run after him.

However, she was stopped by a man at the entrance to the tavern. He asked Samuel where she was going but strangely called her by a different name. He called her Fern, and he seemed quite annoyed with Samuel even though they had just met.

Samuel tried to tell the guy that someone who looked just like her stole her money, but that got the guy to give her a strange look. He then asked Samuel if she was feeling well, as the guy who just left was the town hero, and he didn’t look anything like Samuel.

The guy then looked Samuel up and down and laughed. He then pointed out the hero was tall, handsome, buff and a man, while Samuel was short, beautiful, skinny and most importantly a woman.

Samuel let out an awkward laugh and then called the guy crazy. She then looked down at herself to try and prove that she was a man, but she immediately saw what the guy was talking about. Somehow, Samuel had swapped bodies with the Barmaid.

Samuel looked at herself completely shocked, unable to bring herself to move or say a word, at least until the guy who stopped her from chasing after her old body snapped his fingers and told Samuel to get back to work.

Samuel looked up and raised an eyebrow. He then managed to tell the guy that this was all a misunderstanding, that something had swapped her body with his Barmaid, and that she was actually the hero who stopped the witch.

The guy rolled his eyes and told Samuel that her joke wasn’t funny. He then clapped his hands and told Samuel to get back to work. Samuel suddenly felt something on her back starting to burn. It was a deal marker.

It’s a magical marker used when two people make a deal. It’s used to hold both parties to the deal they made. So Fern, the original owner of this body, likely made a deal with the man, who was also likely the owner of the tavern.

So since Samuel swapped with Fern, her deal marker was now Samuel’s problem, and seeing how expensive deal markers are to have cast by mages, there was a good chance that Fern owed the owner a lot of money.

The burning continued and Samuel gave in and said she’d get to work. She then walked over to the bar and grabbed some cups, then turned and filled them with mead. The burning feeling stopped, and Samuel let out a sigh of relief.

She then took the cups she filled and brought them to the customers who had been waiting. For the most part, the customers seemed to know Fern, so they were quite friendly towards Samuel, who was now the one in her body.

However, there were a few bad apples among the bunch. A couple of guys were quite angry that she took so long and yelled at her, while another guy tried to flirt with her. Samuel shivered at the thought of a creepy guy hitting on her.

She then let out an awkward laugh as she realized that’s probably how she’s made women feel during her travels. Samuel shook her head; that couldn’t be the case, these guys were gross, ugly and simple workers, while she was tall, buff and an adventurer, so it was much different.

As the night continued, Samuel found herself serving more and more customers, cleaning more and more messes made by them, and of course, getting hit on and yelled at almost nonstop by her customers who had had too much to drink.

Samuel worked until about three in the morning, which was when the owner came back out and told everyone to hit the road. There were some unhappy customers who wanted to continue drinking, but the owner is quite intimidating when he wants to be, and they left without incident.

Samuel was happy she no longer had to work and would be able to go look for her old body; however, when she tried to leave, the boss stopped her again and told her she couldn’t leave yet. He informed her she had to clean the tables, sweep the floors and then wash the cups.

Samuel looked at him annoyed but knew she couldn’t get out of it. She then asked if he was going to at least help, which made him laugh in her face. He said considering she still owed him two thousand gold, he felt okay making her do all the work until it was paid off.

Samuel gulped as she heard that. That was a lot of gold even for an adventurer like her. The bag of gold she got from the town only likely had a hundred or so gold coins, and Samuel could have used that to feed herself for years.

So she had no idea what Fern could have possibly needed all that money for; Samuel couldn’t even think of a way to spend that much money in this town. Before the owner vanished again, Samuel asked him how much she paid back today alone.

The owner stopped and seemed to think about it. He said the bar did well today, so she’d make about two gold coins as per their agreement on her shares of the income. Samuel gulped again; she only made two gold coins, even though she was sure she earned at least thirty today.

If she made that every day, she’d still have to work here for a thousand days, or about three years. As the owner vanished, Samuel stood there in disbelief; in one day she went from a hero to a zero, from a handsome adventurer to a beautiful barmaid, and she had no idea why or how to undo it.