Wild Era, Ch 7: Highmist

An hour later, the walls of Highmist rose in front of Kelin.

He passed through the gate with a flash of his guild badge at the guards. They looked surprised at the Low Steel rank it displayed, since he wasn’t at the First Evolution yet, but it was close enough that they didn’t pay much attention.

Low Steel quests started at Level 100 and went up to 150 or so, and it often took until Level 125 or higher to complete them and earn the rank. Achieving it before the First Evolution, like he had, was a mark of significant ability. 

It usually took several quests to prove your ability and earn a new rank, but the Path had upgraded it for him after his brief stint as a guild inspector, which was a rare and direct route.

It was the middle of the night, but it didn’t make much difference to the city, which was still lively, even if it was calmer and quieter than during the day. As levels and Constitution went up, people needed less sleep, so there was always some activity going on. 

The streets were lit by colorful orbs of mana and glowing crystals, lending everything an air of mystery and magic. Here and there, street performers tossed magical fireworks into the sky and made scenes from stories appear.

On the way to the guild, he stopped by a few food stands he liked and picked up quite a number of hot and cold meals that he stored away for later.

The food stalls did quite a bit of business with late night visitors, since the more established restaurants tended to follow a more daylight schedule.

He got a collection of different things, from grilled meat with tangy sauce in a thin flour wrap, to bowls of spicy stew made with wild meat, some roasted vegetables that supposedly came from inside a dungeon and had a high mana content, flasks of ale and wine, various types of fruits and honeyed snacks, and more.

There were also some desserts made of fruit and shaved ice that Highmist was known for, which had mint and colorful honey syrups on them. Some of them were fashioned into intricate spirals and animal shapes.

Almost all of the food was served on large silvery leaves that were slightly curved. Depending on how they were cut and bent, they worked as plates and bowls. 

The plant they came from was called mistleaf, and it was a shrub that grew wild all across the plains near the city. 

It was far more than he could eat for now, but he wanted to take some meals to Yao and Naomi, to make sure that they weren’t bored with what they had, and it would be good to have some things himself while he was working later, either in the guild or in a dungeon.

The guild had a tavern that served meals to the kids and all of the other guests, which was also open around the clock, but variety was the spice of life. 

When he arrived at the guild, he swung by the front counter. 

Jesra wasn’t there, so he kept the chit chat to a minimum and reported the results of the dungeon, focusing on the undead presence.

“I’ll flag it and send it up to the captain,” the clerk said. His name was Heren and he was a lean and official type, but his words were polite as he took the report. “That’s not the only one that’s been tampered with, I’m afraid.”

Kelin just chuckled in agreement.

“Is Captain Sandren on duty tonight?” he asked.

“It’s Captain Tures right now,” Heren replied. “But I can make a note to refer the matter to Captain Sandren as well.”

He ran his hand across the runestone at the desk to check, and then he looked up in surprise. 

“It seems Captain Sandren has already left a message for you,” he said as he reached into the air. A glowing message rune flashed into existence on his palm and he offered it to Kelin. 

“Here you go.”

Kelin smiled as he reached out to touch the rune. As soon as he did, a message flared into his awareness. 

“Kelin, I’m sorry that this message is brief. I’m looking forward to other things with you, but there are a few things you should know as soon as you’re back in town. 

First, I’ve used the guild’s authority to lock down most of Baron Verasun’s dungeon teams and I’m causing him some trouble politically to keep him busy.

I’ve also leveled some serious charges against him and a hefty fine, but it will take a little while before it’s settled.

He is furious about his butler’s death and his daughter joining the guild, but he’s as cold as a snake and is using other means to show it. He disowned the girl and has shown no remorse about it, but he’s trying to blame the guild, me, and you specifically for killing his people in the dungeon.

He’s saying that we framed them all somehow and got his daughter caught up in it, and that of course he’s the innocent party who just wanted to clear the dungeon in the name of Highmist.

It’s a bunch of nonsense, but he has a good deal of influence in the city, so people are listening to him.

I suspect he’ll try something more elaborate soon, and that he’ll want to clean up loose ends, so keep an eye out for your safety, as well as the safety of those friends of yours.

They wanted to head back to Cerith, but I talked them out of it. They’re staying at the guild here for now, which is the safest place in the city. 

Highmist is Verasun's power base, but for that reason it's also where he has to be the most cautious about what he does, and I'm keeping an eye on him. Our guild hall is also stronger than Cerith's.

There aren’t many high-level assassins he could send after you without the guild knowing about it, but there are less direct methods, so you still need to be careful.

In other news, we found two other dungeons that Sarathia tampered with immediately after that one, and one of them was already breaking. 

They both had undead inside.

I’ve dispatched guild teams to deal with them, but I doubt that’s the end of it. It looks like Sarathia was trying to start an undead plague and really disrupt Celadon.

Your help finding that one has brought it to the guild’s attention in time, so we should be able to stop it, but I’m heading out myself to scout the region for anything else out of the ordinary. 

I’ll be back soon. Take care of yourself. 

P.S. I’m looking forward to that date.

The message ended there and the rune disintegrated.

Kelin considered the contents for a moment, but they didn’t significantly change his plans, so he just made a note of them. 

It looked like Sandren was going to be busy for a day or two. 

He was a little disappointed she wasn’t waiting for him, but she had work to do and so did he. He would catch up with her when she was back.

In the meantime, it was the middle of the night and the kids would be asleep, so he booked a room for a week and then headed off to the guild shops.

Training could wait until the morning, but he wanted to offload his loot as soon as possible and get it out of his bags.

The same bored guild clerk was at the sales desk again, but he woke up as Kelin started unloading his spatial items.

There was nowhere near enough space on the counter, so the clerk had to start transferring everything into a spatial crate as Kelin continued to unload it.

Except for the things he needed for crafting, he emptied all of the materials, weapons, and random items he’d acquired from the last two dungeons, as well as all of the cores under Level 80.

There were a few hundred of them.

He’d collected about two hundred cores from the Coralfire dungeon and another hundred and fifty from the Rising Mist dungeon. 

Once he sold off the lower ones, he still had about sixty at Levels 80-85, and a few dozen more at Levels 105-110.

He was planning to use the higher ones for the training halls.

Cores and mana crystals were what powered the simulations and made up the main cost of running them. He’d brought enough back that he would be able to afford it for quite a while.

The halls could do both combat and crafting simulations, but only combat practice was useful at this level.

Crafting practice could be accomplished with real materials. It was only worth using the halls for it when materials were hard to find. 

With real materials, even if you failed most of the time, there were usually still a few successes to cover some of the cost.

He sold off all of his Elite cores too, since they were worth more than usual for their level. Each of the ones from the Level 110 Elites was worth a dozen or more regular Level 100 cores.

After that, he got rid of dozens of necrotic gems, and all of the other extra materials he’d collected, along with his old bracers that were still broken.

The total was impressive.

“4,107 gold,” the clerk said as he counted it all. He looked slightly impressed, but his eyelids were beginning to droop again. 

It was a decent amount, but it was only enough to buy one or two decent pieces of First Evolution gear or a handful of major healing potions.

It would all be gone soon enough.

Half of the value of this sale came from the Silver Hand of Death’s finger bones and the materials from the Grey Lord of the Mists, which weren’t even supposed to be in that dungeon. 

If he’d run those dungeons with a full team of five, they would have only ended up with about eight hundred gold each. If a run went badly and an adventurer had to use a major potion to regenerate a limb, it would be a complete wash.

That was why it was essential to have either a good healer or a wealthy backer. 

One failure could ruin a career.

On average, a Level 80 core cost about a gold, which was double a Level 40 core, and a Level 100 core was about a gold and a half. 

There was never any lack of demand for them, either for buying or selling. Cores and materials at that level went into a bottomless pit of crafting, training hall practice, and more. 

There were always people who could use them.

He’d kept back the elemental orbs and silverflame bars, as well as the affinity items from the Coralfire Dungeon including the Burning Sea Grimoire, Burning Sea Elixir, and Coral Sea Fire Pearl.

Most of it was going to the kids to help set them up for the future.

As for himself, the equipment he wanted weren’t things that could be bought for money, at least not with a few thousand gold. 

His cloak, staff, and new bracers were better than any First Evolution gear that could be found on the market. 

His clothing and the enchantments on it needed some work, but it would be more efficient to take care of that himself. The base materials for that were easily acquired, but he needed to do some training first.

He had saved all of the Fire-aligned crafting materials from the Coralfire dungeon, since those were the easiest for him to use. 

He had hundreds of strips of Sandstar hide, as well as over eight hundred Coralfire scales and Sandfire Eel Scales at the Common grade, plus another four hundred Royal Sandfire Eel scales at the Uncommon grade.

All of it could be used for talismans.

He still had the Sandfire Rubies from the Coralfire dungeon, both the two royal versions that were going to be amulets for Yao and Naomi, and the half dozen regular ones that would work as a poison antidote in a pinch.

“Do you want any of the gold in guild credit or equivalent trade?” the clerk asked. “You have a ten percent discount as a sergeant in the army, which applies to everything from the guild.”

“I need to clear a few potions that I picked up on credit,” Kelin replied, thinking of the ones that Sandren had given him. “Three intermediate health potions and the same in mana, plus a greater of each.”

The clerk ran his hand over a runestone on the desk and nodded.

“Intermediate healing potions are 3 gold each. Intermediate mana potions are 5 gold, and greater healing and greater mana are 50 gold each. That’s 124 gold, and then minus your 10% discount. The total is 111 gold and 12 silver.”

The clerk looked up when he was done. 

“Anything else?”

“Yes,” Kelin said with a slight smile. “I’ll take a major healing potion and two greater ones, as well as three major mana potions and ten greaters.”

The clerk blinked at him, but then he shrugged.

“Major healing potions are 500 gold each. Major mana potions are 200 gold. That’s 1,100 gold, plus 50 each for the greaters is another 600. 1,700 total, so 1,530 after your discount.”

“And fifty intermediates of each,” Kelin added as an afterthought.

The clerk gave him an annoyed look, but then sighed as he added it up. 

“Another 360 gold after your discount. I’ll be back in a moment with them all.”

It was a large expense for someone under Level 100, but only a drop in the bucket for the number of potions that the guild moved in a day, so there was no trouble with the size of the order.

Intermediate mana potions restored about 110 mana, if they were used far enough apart, while greater ones did 250 to 300 mana and majors did 1,000 or a bit more.

The price for using the higher ones was inefficient, but that was due to the rarity of the materials.

Ten intermediate potions only cost fifty gold, but it was the same amount of mana as a major potion that cost four times as much. 

Even skilled mages tended to use intermediate potions unless it was a matter of life and death. Otherwise, it was simply drinking gold.

The issue was that you couldn’t drink too many potions close together, which justified having some of the better ones on hand. 

The clerk wandered off into the back room and came back a minute later with several small boxes. Inside each one, there was a carefully padded rack that held the different potion vials.

“Here you are,” he said as he set them all on the counter. “You have 2,105 gold and 8 silver left.”

Kelin inspected them with a sense of satisfaction.

It was always best to stock up on potions when the opportunity presented itself. They were like a second life.

If you had them, you lived. 

If you didn’t, you died. 

There was nothing to argue about when it came to having a proper supply.

Since he had a healing ability, he didn’t need as many healing potions as he did mana, but he still planned to keep some on hand in case events conspired against him.

Bad luck and timing would eventually catch up with even the swiftest runner. 

He knew that better than most. 

He also had no doubt that Verasun would try something again, and probably before too long. 

“Do you have any spatial crystals in stock?” he asked as he stored the boxes away.

He’d gone bargain hunting for crystals to expand his storage space before, but the guild had their own supply, like it did most things, so this was the best place to check now that he had some gold.

“Standard ones,” the clerk replied with a sigh. “Do you want low, middle, or high grade? It’s 100, 350, and 1,500 gold each.“

Kelin tapped his finger on the desk for a moment.

His spatial pocket was fifteen feet in every direction, which was decent for transporting loot from a dungeon, but he could still make it bigger. 

It took more energy the larger it became, but it was still fairly small, at least from his old perspective, which associated that term with anything under the size of a planet.

A low-grade crystal would add about a foot in each direction, while mid-grade and high-grade ones would do more. 

The high-grade one he’d taken from Verasun’s dimensional pedestal had added 9 feet in every direction, but it hadn’t been fresh. Part of its energy had already been used up as a dimensional anchor.

After he considered the price, however, he shook his head. 

He could buy some, but he needed the money for other things right now.  He’d come back later if he had the funds.

“Just two basic pouches,” he decided, “three feet in each direction.”

“100 total,” the clerk replied. “90 for you.”

He wandered into the back room and returned a moment later with two hand-sized pouches made of a rich, burnished leather. 

They didn’t look like spatial pouches, just like ones that mages tended to carry for spell components and odd bits and ends, but they were professionally made.

They were for the kids, so they didn’t have to haul their gear around in plain view of everyone.

Technically, it was a luxury, so the basic size would be enough for a while.

He had considered making them haul giant backpacks around as a way of building character, like he had for his first dungeon in this life, but that would mark them as newbies without a backer,

That could draw negative attention and get them targeted by bandits looking for an easy mark.

“The rest in gold,” Kelin said as he stored the pouches away.

When the clerk finished counting out the remaining gold, it was a small mountain of coins that Kelin transferred to his storage space.

That left him with a little over 2,000 gold, and he had other things to trade in if he needed more.

He tipped the clerk ten gold for the trouble, which got him a nod of thanks, and then he headed out of the shop.

It was still late at night and the kids were asleep, so he headed to his room to get some rest. He would get started on the crafting and his other work in the morning.

As he collapsed into the cold sheets, his mind flickered through a dozen plans for how to deal with Verasun.