Chapter 161: Work

AN: Extra-long chapter!

Erani and I walked through the gates and entered the town of Salvation. It was evening, probably around seven in the afternoon, so we needed to get our living accommodations sorted out. We’d need someplace to sleep, after all, and for that, we’d need money. Lyr, or eyt, or whatever the people here called the currency—Bon and the others had made it sound so confusing.

So I walked into the town and looked around.

“Y’know, compared to the kingdom,” I remarked, strolling down the street alongside Erani, “this place is pretty different.”

“You think?”

“Yeah, yeah. Like, not better or worse. Just different.”

“Hmm, their architectural styles are quite divergent. I mean, back in Ordensville and Carth, I was so used to seeing those pointed roofs. But here, it feels like nine out of ten buildings have domed roofs. It's peculiar."

"I hadn't even noticed," I frowned. Erani was right though, all the roofs in this town were indeed domed.

"Well, then what did you notice?"

"There are way more windows."

"Windows?" Erani chuckled.

I nodded. “You don’t see it? Feels like there’s one in every wall. And they all have glass! Where I come from, I hardly ever saw either—windows or glass. This place isn’t rich or anything, is it? ‘Cause I feel like I’m just seeing silver pieces embedded in every single wall around here. It’s crazy.”

“Well, I don’t think there are really that many more holes in their walls than there were in ours, but I do notice what you mean about the abundance of glass windows. I believe the empire has more desert? Well, I know they have a larger territory than Koinkar, but just proportionately. If I remember right, we import a lot of glass from them.”

“Imported,” I corrected. “Not anymore, according to what those border guards said. Apparently trade has been cut off.”

“Well, that doesn't surprise me. I certainly wouldn’t want to associate with us, if I were them.”

I snorted. “Nah, that’s just cowardly. I mean, the kingdom still makes Enchanted stuff, right? Can’t believe they’d be scared off from us so easily. Especially when cutting off trade means missing out on Enchanted gear. It just weakens them, plain and simple.”

“But it's obviously a risky proposition to continue trading.”

"Sure, there are risks. But they have no reason to believe—" I paused, glancing around at the surrounding crowd. With a lowered voice, I leaned closer to Erani. “No reason to believe there’s anything suspicious going on with Koinkar’s leadership being compromised. Not like they expect to suddenly get a shipment of swords that blow them up, or anything. So what, you’re trading with some folks with a bad reputation. Big whoop, as long as they get the job done and the Enchantments are still high quality. Just doesn’t make sense why they’d be scared off so easily.”

“I’m surprised you think that way. Don’t you kind of hate the kingdom? For deciding you should…y’know…die?”

“Well yeah. But I’m not biased. I don’t exactly appreciate it, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t take a deal where they give me a bunch of Enchanted shit every week. Not like it has cooties.”

“I think you are biased. You sure this isn't influenced by your desire for the empire to have more Enchanted gear for you to buy?”

I rolled my eyes. “That has nothing to do with it. Yeah, it’d help me if they made that decision. But it’s still the objectively…”

I stopped speaking as we passed by something on the side of the street. A flowerbed.

"What's the matter?" Erani asked.

“They really seem to like those, huh?”

“What?”

“The flowers. I feel like we’ve passed ten of them in, like, twenty paces.” I looked back. Sure enough, there were those same stone flowerbeds lining the streets, both sides, every few paces. And in them were the same little, white-petaled flowers.

“Well, they’re pretty.”

“Yeah, not that pretty, though. You’d think they’d at least want some more color. Or to spend their money on something more functional than a thousand flowerpots.”

Erani shrugged, looking down at them. Then she got a curious expression on her face—one that I could barely see, with her Distortion Strike active. But she pursed her lips, staring at the flowers. “Are they…glowing?”

I turned my attention back to the white flowers. Sure enough, upon closer inspection, I realized they emitted a faint light. Individually, it was subtle, but together, it created a radiant glow. Then I looked around, and realized there was nothing else lighting the streets. At this time, the sun was setting, and the town should’ve been going dark. But it wasn’t. Normally, in the kingdom, the richer towns had perpetual lighting effects from Spells or Enchantments, but this place didn’t have that.

“They’re lighting fixtures,” I realized. “They're using these flowers to light up the streets.”

"Oh," Erani responded, her gaze sweeping across the scene as comprehension dawned. "Yes, that's interesting. It's a clever solution, I suppose."

“Yeah. I like it. Adds to the mystical feel, I guess,” I laughed. “Certainly feels like a work of the gods, finally finding myself here.”

Erani nodded in agreement.

We continued walking aimlessly down the main road, the darkness slowly descending, and the streets sparsely populated. Still, I couldn’t help but notice the treatment we received from those who did cross our path. Obviously, they didn’t exactly like our looks. The black, spiked armor covering my body, the wafting smoke covering Erani’s…Hells, even I emitted wisps of mist due to my constant practice of Noxious Grasp.

I was careful not to touch anyone but Erani, since Noxious Grasp would damage anyone who did brush past me. But that still left the mist wafting from my faceplate and all other cracks in the armor. I was somewhat worried about accidently touching the wrong person, but honestly, with Dark Plate on, I’d be surprised if anyone willingly got closer than a couple paces from me, much less walked up and tapped me on the shoulder. And if they did, could they really be surprised that it did some retaliatory damage? I was covered in spikes, after all. So it probably wouldn’t be an issue. And it was yet more encouragement for nobody to deal any damage to me—accidentally or otherwise.

If someone stumbled and bumped into me, if they accidentally poked me with a weapon, hells, if someone tried to mug me and ran off when they realized I was Classed and had too many Stats to knock around. Any of that could end up forcing me to waste a Time Loop to undo their gaining that forbidden knowledge of my Class. Either that or getting them to shut up some other way. Any damage dealt to me would give them a System notification talking about the Minute Mage Class, and if they saw something about a Class they’d never heard about, they’d ask people, spread the word, and eventually it would get to the Demons that I was here. So yeah, I definitely wanted to broadcast as strongly as possible: Do not approach me, do not touch me, do not provoke me. And if that meant ruffling a few feathers, well, so be it.

My business wasn’t with the civilians, anyway. Erani and I knew where we needed to get money, and it wasn’t by interacting with randos off the street.

“You think they have a lodge for the Adventurer’s Guild? Or just a job board?” I asked Erani.

“Guess there’s only one way to find out.”

After some asking around—which wasn’t exactly easy, given our appearances—we eventually got directions to a place we could find work as adventurers. And it was a full guild lodge, which was nice. I hadn’t honestly expected one, given the size of the town—job boards were much more common among smaller places like these, especially when their income was lower—but hey, it was a pleasant surprise.

The building was short and wide, double front doors inviting us in. So we walked up, already hearing the sound of commotion coming from inside.

When we opened the doors, the noise of a dozen conversations and probably a couple arguments greeted us, alongside the the unmistakable warm glow of a tavern interior. Tables littered the lodge floor, with people sitting all around slamming beers down with their buddies. It was around dinnertime, so the borderline irresistible scent of good food wafted into my nose.

“It’s taking everything I have not to just run up and start eating right off of everyone’s plates,” Erani muttered to me with a chuckle.

“Sounds like a good idea,” I laughed back. “I think we should just rob ‘em all for all the meat and bread they have.”

“Yeah, rob a room of Classers. Perfect plan.”

We walked into the room. It wasn’t like it was all tavern, of course—the guild served as a rest lodge for adventurers, but its main purpose was a place of business. Down, past the bar was a desk with a receptionist, where we could bring job orders we wanted to accept, and on a few walls were big boards with dozens of papers pinned up—all of them offers that could make us some money.

As we stepped into the lodge, my boots thunking against the wooden boards, I definitely caught a few suspicious glares, but it was honestly less than I’d expected. Though, in retrospect, it made sense. Or, at least, it did when I took note of the way half of these Classers looked. Most had some form of armor on—probably all coming from jobs, themselves—and many of them had some sort of magical effect going. Sure, not all were quite as obvious as Erani’s Distortion Strike, but I noticed a couple people with glowing halos of light floating above their heads, some others with bright green light shining from their eyes, and one guy even had his entire head on fire—though the flames themselves seemed harmless.

Yeah, among Classers, we at least didn’t look too weird. Some people probably even recognized Erani’s Spell as Distortion Strike, with it being a somewhat known Spell of a somewhat common Class.

So we carefully moved our way through the room—again, with me keeping my distance from the surrounding people. Not as easy when they weren’t actively afraid or creeped out by my appearance, but I tried to give my best menacing glare to anyone to walk by, which effectively signaled for them to take a step to the side, and I kept my distance from the more crowded center of the room.

There were a few boards put up all along the different walls of the room, none of which were labeled, so we just walked up to a random one. This one, when we got close enough, we realized wasn’t for available jobs, but rather a ‘looking for party’ board, where individual adventurers could put up requests for larger parties to take them in, that way they could take on higher-difficulty jobs with less risk. Not what we wanted, so we moved on.

The next one we looked at was what we were searching for. A job board, organized by difficulty. Thankfully, due to the organization, the thing was pretty easy to find jobs within our range, despite how absolutely full it was. Most of the jobs seemed new, too, not like they’d been sitting around for forever—a testament to just how full of adventurers this town really seemed to be.

“Okay,” I said, “we just need to find something quick to finish, so we can get money by tonight.”

“Monster elimination would probably be best, then. Nothing else that quick would pay well.”

“So, monster elimination, monster elimination…” I scanned over the board, looking for decent jobs. I could certainly find some that seemed safe and quick, but there was one problem. “How much is an eyt worth?”

“Yeah, pretty tough to figure out what to do when we have no idea what it actually pays.”

I looked over at the receptionist by the desk. “You think they could be of any help?”

We walked over to the front desk, keeping to the walls so as to not be forced to push through the crowd. The woman sitting there looked up when she saw us approach, her eyebrows rising when she saw our appearances, but she said nothing.

“Hey,” I said when we got to her, “do you have, like, an inn? Can we pay you money for rooms?”

She chuckled politely. “Yes, of course. Six hundred eyt for a night in a one-bed.”

I nodded. “Alright. And when we complete a job, we can get the reward immediately, correct?”

“Yes, just come to me with proof of completion, ideally. If you don’t have any, it’ll probably take a little longer to ensure you actually did it.” I saw her eyes glance over us—again, understandably, given my armor and Erani’s shadowy state. However, I noticed her eyes lingering on one spot in particular.

Erani coughed awkwardly as she, too, noticed the receptionist staring straight at her missing arm. The woman blinked and looked back up at us, obviously unsure whether to apologize verbally or just move on in the conversation.

I just wrapped my arm around Erani and pulled her close to me, so that her left arm was wedged between our bodies—unable to be attacked by wandering eyes. I was sure the receptionist didn’t mean harm, but still. “Got it. So, like, for an elimination job, we can just bring heads or something, right?”

Her eyes widened, looking at me like I’d said something wrong. What had I done? Hesitantly, she spoke, “...No, bringing a sack of bleeding monster heads into the guild lobby would probably not be a good idea. Perhaps something else? Teeth or horns, for instance, would work just fine.”

“Oh. Sure.”

“Are you looking for a job you can do to get a room for tonight?”

“Yeah, ideally something we can do fast. And I guess something that pays at least, like, two thousand, or something. With the room and then food and stuff, that’d get us this night and tomorrow, maybe. I mean, ideally we’d end up getting enough for a change of clothes, too, so maybe closer to three thousand. Shouldn’t be too hard, right?”

“Hm,” she frowned. “Finding something that pays that well would probably be quite difficult, in these parts. Lots of adventurers—lots of competition.”

“Yeah, but we’re two silver-degrees,” I gestured to Erani and myself. “Getting enough money for a few nights in an inn shouldn’t be much of an issue at all, even given the competition, right?”

She shrugged. “Even still. We get a good many individual adventurers coming out here looking for work, so even the work that’s rated for one or two silver-degrees is slim.” She pursed her lips. “Well, even if you can’t find any official jobs that pay that well, we always have the ongoing bounty for Gloomspurs.”

“Oh? How much?”

“Thirty each. We typically ask for people to bring in the front left tooth as proof of killing, that way we can ensure there’s nobody taking two trophies from the same one.”

“Thirty?” I thought back to the cost of six hundred eyt for even a single night in a one-bed room. “That’s…not much, isn't it?”

“Definitely isn’t. But there are a lot of them out there, so as long as they don’t pose much of a personal threat to you, it wouldn’t take too long.”

“Well, like, how much really is thirty eyt?”

“Are you not from around here?”

“Yeah, we’re refugees.” I paused, realizing it would probably be better to not advertise the fact we were new arrivals—the Demons could let the empire know that we’d just now escaped to their borders, so telling people we’d just arrived would probably tip people off to our identities. “Been here a while, probably a week or so, but we haven’t had the chance to really try to integrate into society yet, so y’know…Anyway, like, what’s it worth?”

“Uh,” she glanced around, obviously trying to come up with an example, “if you went up to the bar asking for food, with thirty in hand, you could get…a piece of bread, I guess?”

I chuckled. “Killing monsters for bread crumbs. Great.”

“That’s what happens when you’re an individual, or even a pair,” the receptionist shrugged.

“Yeah, I guess.” I sighed, but then remembered something and frowned. “Wait, there was a board up there for people looking for party members. Could we put our names up?”

“Absolutely. Probably won’t get any takers in time for tonight, though. Normally takes at least a few days, maybe a week or two, before you get anyone. People normally only work with friends, or at least people they’re tangentially aware of. Not total strangers. But I can still put you up on the board.”

I shrugged. “Couldn’t hurt.”

“Great. I’ll make some of them just with the default templating, unless you had anything in mind for a specific design in how you want your request posters to look.”

I glanced over at Erani, who shook her head in a sign of indifference. “Yeah, whatever works. You probably know best about what gets people’s attention more than we do.”

“Great. It’s best to put your exact Levels and Classes on there, plus some basic info on your builds, personality, history, who you work best with, that sort of thing. So if you want to give me whatever you think is most fitting, that’ll work.”

“Uhh…” I glanced over at Erani again, then looked back to the receptionist. “Just say…two Magic-Types, is fine.”

“No more info on your Classes or builds?”

“Nah. Probably not that important, right?”

She sighed and shook her head. “You won’t get any takers like that, but sure. I’ll just put down what I already know about you two.”

“Yeah. That’s fine.”

She nodded. “Well, if that’s all you need, there’s kind of a line, so…”

I looked back and saw a group of people impatiently waiting on us. “Oh, right. Yeah. Sorry. We’ll get out of your way.”

With that, we hurriedly walked off.

“Gods,” I muttered to Erani, “I’ve gotta get used to all of this again. Feels so weird to just be…back.”

“You and me both,” she nodded. “Maybe it's the looks I’m getting from everyone because of Distortion Strike, but I feel so on-edge around all these people. Can’t keep them all in my vision at the same time.”

“Yeah, well. Guess we’re just gonna have to tough it out.”

“At least we can get back out of the walls now. I’m worried about Ainash.”

“Yeah, it’s only been, what, half an hour? Not even that? But I still feel uneasy not having her with us.”

“Well let's head out, then. If we’re only getting thirty eyt per Gloomspur killed, then it’ll take a good bit of killing to get a night’s rest.”

“Yeah,” I shook my head. “Twenty killed monsters for a single room feels criminal.”

She laughed. “Maybe turning to a life of crime wasn’t so bad an idea.”

“We should probably try to at least wait one day before we resort to that, I think.”

“Perhaps.”

“Okay, well let’s get out of here. It’s stuffy and loud. I want to hurry up and get back in our element. Killing shit in the middle of nowhere.”

“Y’know, when you put it like that, it kind of makes me worried about us.”

“Nah. Not a bad thing to have a set of skills.”

“A set of skills,” Erani laughed again. “I guess you could call it that.”