How to Succeed In Business in a New World

A Day of Hustle and Bustle

    It felt great to have a good night’s sleep after what a long day yesterday had felt like. I had never imagined there would be so much ado about rats. But it’d be worth it this morning when we get to collect the bounty and experience this morning. It’d be nice to do one more easy trifle of a task that we can get done before lunch just to get as much capital available for our shopping spree today. But at the same time I was excited to get my new weapon at the very least, so maybe doing that first would be better, after all if it means we can do a harder quest that’d be for the best. Getting the ball rolling on the real money making stuff would be great, and it’d be even more incredible if I was able to test out my new weapon. Maybe I was over hyping it to myself but it’s only because I really believed it would work that well and best of all it’d be entirely unique. As much as I liked to powergame I always did it by finding my own way, I was never one to read guides and follow a meta, so why should I do anything conventional now? Plus if regular combat was going to follow some form of rock-paper-scissors style then why pick something where you’re set up to lose half the time. By breaking the mould a whole new angle on the art of combat would be unlocked, and with that angle you’d be able to take the existing system by storm. No one would know how to fight against it and there’d be no point in learning techniques to counter it if it was just one guy, how much of a threat could one guy be? Not to mention I would want to be tweaking this and adding features to it myself until it can barely be recognized at what I started out with, that way I’ll always be evolving and able to do things I couldn’t before. That would be the downside of starting with a mythic sword or what have you, it’d be almost impossible to get an upgrade on it. You’d need to become more skilled if you wanted to do better with it. If I can slap on an upgrade and get stronger just from a few hours of tinkering than I’d do it ten times out of ten. And if I practice too then the increase will be multiplicative, much better than anyone just ‘mastering their craft’ I’d get miles further than them on gimmicks and cunning. That would be my credo. Anything someone else can do with hours of practice and training, I could do with some outside the box plan. It seemed like just a more enjoyable way to earn a living too, at least better than a lifetime of hard work just to do the same thing you’ve been doing when the chips are down. 

The trip into town was a bit more exciting as I broke the news to Marie that it was time we actually went and bought some equipment which she seemed to like the idea of. 

“So do you know of any places that we should go to to buy gear?”

“Hmm, nope. But we can ask at the guild if they recommend any places.” I was sort of counting on her as a local guide but that suggestion wasn’t actually too bad, in fact I remember seeing something that affiliated merchants give you a discount if you show your Guild Card. But also just to buy a book we needed to show a Guild Card so it seemed like you’d always just be getting a discount on weapons there. It did make a bit doubtful of the quality you’d be getting or if they didn’t just have inflated prices to begin with so cutting it seemed fair. Either way I doubt that any armory would carry what I planned to use as my iconic weapon. As much as I wanted it to be a surprise it would be better to ask Marie rather than risk tipping my hand to the bureaucrats at the guild or any of the armorers.

“Do you know where I would be able to get a bug catching net?” 

“Why would you need that?” She sure picked a good time to get an attitude.

“I think it’d come in handy. Good for catching things, smaller things, applying leverage to bigger things and that stuff.” I felt a little embarrassed about it now but I was still confident that once the idea saw action that I would be proved the genius I always knew I was.

“I think I may know about a few stores that carry them, but they’re usually just for kids who want to catch bugs for fun in the summer. I don’t think they’d have combat ready bugnets.” That was the point! I should be the only one with a combat grade bugnet! I was planning on making modifications to it and I was prepared for it to need some reinforcement right out of the gate. It should at least be able to take some hits and be pretty sturdy before I field tested it. I couldn’t imagine the build quality on anything being too cheap in these days cause it isn’t just being churned out by machines on an assembly line it was actually being made by hand and the parts were made by hand too. Sure it won’t have nylon netting or or polymer hand grips but I could live without that stuff as long as all the components were quality. I wouldn’t be able to get any sort of masterwork bugnet so I’d need to do a fair amount of custom work down the line but for now I just needed something that wouldn’t fall apart on me immediately. It probably wouldn’t be too hard to make one myself and over time I’d almost definitely end up making replacement parts of all of it but for now I just wanted a good base to work off of. I can imagine the netting would be the hardest part especially because the tighter you want the holes the more work you have to do and same with how big of a compartment you want and anything else like that would multiply your work. The actual work didn’t seem so complex but it certainly seemed frustrating and tedious, the weaving was the hardest part without a doubt. Unless they could use a loom or something for that. I was pretty foggy on how looms work. Or if they exist. They probably do, maybe I’ll ask someone at some point. Either way buying a premade one was my best option for now until I could get something of a workshop set up. 

Turning in the quest wasn’t a hassle at all even though I was worried that the owner would find about the damage to his building that a certain someone’s rear had necessitated. If he did he didn’t give the guild any grief about it because they didn’t give us any grief about it. Once the money traded hands there was officially nothing he could do about it, hopefully at least. It was pretty good money but I was far from eager to give up even a single cent of it. We did our job, everything else we did was irrelevant. While I had been turning in the quest Marie had gone to look at the board to see if there were any quests that caught her eye. I had given her my criteria that it should be doable pretty quickly so we still have time to turn it in and shop. I was willing to do something even if it would be too easy considering our new status as Level 4s.

“You see anything food on there?” I was half worried she’d come back talking about how there’s money to be made for self starters with a knack for hard work and all we need to do is make a small down payment.

“There’s this one about bringing a package across town, this one about collecting some talons outside of town aaannnd this one about a sea monster.” As she shuffled through the sheets I noticed that the sea monster was the same as the one I had seen the other day but the bounty had gone up. That was really something I would be interested in but I still don’t think we were ready for that, being underwater seemed like it’d have a whole host of other issues. Maybe if I found out there was some spell or technique I could use in a creative way to help us out I’d consider it. But there wasn’t much of a rush considering they were raising the reward, so it was just a matter of doing it for a s large a reward as possible but still being the one to do it first.

“Sea monster seems a bit out of our capabilities but maybe soon.” I really wasn’t displeased with her picks at all and it was a shame I had to shoot that one down. “The package seems easy enough, and quick too. Let’s do that one.” Having an intra-city courier mission didn’t exactly make a lot of sense to me considering whoever issued the quest had to come here to get it posted, it surely couldn’t have been that much harder to just bring the package where it needed to be. I get that couriers in general used to be much more important before radio and internal combustion engines but at this range it just seemed a bit frivolous. I double checked the bounty and it wasn’t even that bad, certainly much more than I’d expect to get for taking a stroll across town. They gave a range of weights for the item and it wasn’t like we’d be transporting a freshly carved solid bronze statue, it was gonna be a few pounds max. I wasn’t in the business of questioning things so that wasn’t what I was gonna do. For now, I had a bugnet to purchase. 

“Alrighty, I told them that we were taking the quest.”

“Good job, now show me where I can get a bugnet.” Marie was being extremely helpful and reasonable today, I sort of hated to admit it but I was almost getting suspicious of her. Like there was something she wasn’t telling me or she was hiding something from me. Obviously doubting your partner wasn’t healthy but it seemed out of character, she had picked out quests that I agreed with, she even had the suggestion to ask about an armory at the guild. Being on a hot streak like this worried me a t least a little. Maybe it was my eternal cynicism but I felt like there should be some great misfortune coming my way and it would only make sense for it to come from this girl. After all when everything was going well yesterday she had to get stuck. Either way I wasn’t going to let my guard down.

We arrived at a cute little storefront that seemed to sell a little of everything but mostly focused on I guess what would be called outdoor goods, but what I mainly focused in on was the rack of bug catching nets. I took one down and turned it over in my hands a few times before giving it a few exaggerated test swings at the air. After a bit of a flex test I was comfortable with saying that it would do nicely for a start. The build seemed pretty solid and it was a pleasure to hold. One of the first things I’d probably do is replace the shaft with a broom handle or something. It was a good length but a little thin to totally stand up to being used as a real lever or if I wanted to use it as a brace of sorts, though there was something to be said about being quicker and easier to swap hands around. I mostly just want to get it replaced because it was obviously made for a little boy which did make me feel at least a bit inadequate. The net seemed to be pretty good too, I drove my fist into the back of it a few times and it had a little give but wasn’t about to tear or anything. I knew I’d be putting this thing through its paces so it was important that each piece be able to go the distance and I would be replacing each of them by choice and not necessity. Really it seemed that this would be a good choice even though I was willing to shop around a little more, I would probably be coming back to this one anyway. The price wasn’t even that high since it was more made for child enrichment than life and death combat so if this did crap out on me soon it wouldn’t even be that much of a loss. I handed the shop owner his due and got my change in return. It seemed I wouldn’t have to shop around either because now Marie was tugging on my sleeve like an impatient child now.

“It’s time we get going.” Was she that excited to go shopping or was she just bored of this store?

“Get going where?”

“It’s almost time for our quest!”

“What do you mean?” Sure we had planned on doing it after I got my net but why the rush?

“See, it says right here on the info sheet. We need to be available between ten and noon.” That seemed ridiculously arbitrary, what’s the point of that? I get it if the package is time sensitive but the way they made it sound we needed to be there the whole time. Did they not know when it was gonna be ready? I know I had taken a stance that only cared about questions I was getting paid for but at this point things were getting a little absurd. This was without a doubt a weird quest. Maybe the person giving it could shed some light on it, though if they couldn’t that would just create even more questions. Looking at it again the weight being a range was looking suspicious too. At first I thought that it was something the guild would ask you when you come to file a courier quest. They’d just want general categories of weight. But the range given was down to a tenth of a pound. How did you know it would be between these two specific numbers but not what number it would be exactly. I’d say we were accessories to drug smuggling but drug runners would probably at least know the weight of the shipment. In fact they’d probably be particularly interested in the weight of the shipment to be sure no one was helping themself along the way. Whatever business they were in they didn’t seem like they would be too understanding on failing the delivery so we decided now would be a good time to skedaddle.

The building we were going to was actually fairly upscale but it was dwarfed by the buildings surrounding it. It looked to be two stories and absurdly narrow whereas its neighbors were sprawling and eye catching. It looked as if it was ashamed to be here but knew that it had to be. There was no entrance on the front, instead there was a stairway coming off the street into a back alley with a door meeting you at the bottom. I checked the info sheet one last time to see if it said anything about a secret knock, just because this seemed like exactly the type of place to have one. When I was content that there were no special instructions in that regard I rapped on the door in a pattern that came naturally just in case. I thought I made out a hurried pitter of footsteps but I couldn’t be too sure because the door was flung open as quickly as they came. The one who had performed those actions was a feeble looking old man. He was small to begin with but the way he hunched over made him barely waist height. He was bald and he had that strangely shaped skull you sometimes see on bald old men. He had large glasses but that was all I was allowed to see because he turned back around and hurried back into the room as if he had slammed the door on us but forgot to actually slam the door. 

“Come in! Come in! Don’t just stand there!” It was astonishing how he could sound so uninviting while literally inviting us in. There wasn’t far to go in but he went to the far end of the room and perched himself at a drafting table. Was this guy just on a deadline to finish some plans or something and didn’t have a moment to spare? Seeing the guy now made me a little more understanding of why he couldn’t have just brought the package himself, he had a definite hobble to his walk and I wouldn’t be surprised if he needed a cane for anything longer than a few feet. The jaunt to the door must have been inspired only by his great impatience. So now that my keen powers of deduction have answered one of my questions it was time to get to work on unraveling the rest of this mystery. I spied a bookcase in the corner and figured that would be an excellent place to find clues as to this man’s interests and possibly even profession.

“So what are we going to be delivering?” The man exhaled at Marie’s question as if he had already told us a thousand times, not that I was too pleased with her either but for me it was justified. I could have deduced what we were delivering within five minutes with nothing but my sharp detective skills, but I suppose interrogation was part of detecting. 

“You won’t be delivering anything until this Northern Ice Fowl does!” We weren’t kids asking if we were there yet on a road trip. This wasn’t something that we should be berated for not knowing. Were we waiting on some messenger bird to arrive so we could take the delivery somewhere else? I didn’t even know what a Northern Ice Fowl was, though on the off chance that I should I was going to keep my mouth shut. 

“What’s that?” 

“Only one of the rarest and most elegant birds to ever grace this planet!” He was waxing poetic while still being angry at us.

“Then why are you having it deliver messages for you?” As informed as I was it only made me more confused. 

“I’m not!” I was surprised this guy had lived this long with how angry he got at people not knowing things only he knows, doesn’t seem good for the blood. “There’s one upstairs that will be delivering a fertilized egg any moment now! This egg will need to be incubated in extremely cold temperatures which is why you two will be delivering it to a ship that will be taking it to a special facility up north that is better equipped to handle the egg. I can barely keep the room upstairs cold enough for the mother, let alone the egg.” I noticed there was a chute of sorts that led directly onto the drafting table from the ceiling which was presumably where the egg would be coming out. Most of the questions I had coming had been answered now. The weight and time were ranges because he didn’t know when he’d have the egg or how much it would weigh. Though now I was only wondering what the big deal was. This man was obviously almost a literal slave to his work so I should probably be rather delicate with how I phrased this question.

“What’s the point of all this?” Or I could just lose time thinking and leave my partner to question the point of this man’s life. 

“Didn’t your parents ever tell you the legend of the Northern Ice Fowl?” I could honestly and wholeheartedly say, not a chance. It didn’t look like Marie could say any different. “It’s one of the most beautiful birds you could ever hope to see, it’s a blend of the most vivid white and blue plumage that can make you cry. It has tail feathers like ice, as fragile as fine crystal and just as clear. If one of its tail feathers should fall over and be shattered then the whole region will experience a drop in temperature and be blanketed with snow. The legends even say that if you save the life of a Northern Ice Fowl, your deepest wish will be granted… Though in a cruel twist of fate that has led to much of the population being lost to poachers.” That seems like one of the few things that can melt his hardened heart. I could very easily imagine that being the entire reason he got into this field, the story he was told as a child becoming the only ray of hope in his twilight years. Maybe after he had something dear to him taken away and this was his final chance at reclaiming it. That’s what I could only assume at least. That or he just started doing this because it was something he was good at, maybe his family made him study it or something. I was only going to find out about this guy if it was relevant to the job we were doing. It definitely was a complicated job but he didn’t seem like the type to get himself personally involved in the workings of his projects. But for now the job seemed to just be to wait. We couldn’t very well deliver an egg that hadn’t been laid yet. 

After a little over an hour I was starting to get inpatient with the whole process, every quest so far had taken longer than I expected so I didn’t like the path this was going down.

“Maybe we should go up and check on her?”

“Not a chance! Not only is it cold enough that you’ll be unconscious within minutes but your body heat would warm the room far too much! The room is being kept cold with a special seal of frost and it only does enough to keep her just barely comfortable. Introducing any more heat into the environment could spell disaster.”

“Well how do we know that something hasn’t happened to it?” As much as I just wanted to get this moving along it was also a decent question, if he was such an expert he should have a solution for that eventuality. 

“I have a warding stone with her, any major change in energy will be picked up on that and we’ll know as soon as it happens.” He removed a tall crystal with a protruding base from his pocket, it was about the size of a soda can and a very dark blue, it seemed to glint every few seconds and I wasn’t sure if that was a trick of the light or it acting as a heart monitor of sorts. I could only imagine how much all these magic bits and bobs cost, there must be a major conservation effort underway with these things. Not to mention the fee we were getting just from running the thing across town. These things must really be endangered and I can only imagine the prices the poachers paid for them. Maybe there were even bounties out for the poachers. I wasn’t the type to go on a moral crusade to protect the defenceless animals but if there was some money to sweeten the pot then I wouldn’t mind. But you would need to deal with the same conditions as the poachers and the native habitat for these things didn’t seem too inviting. I’ll pass for now but maybe if I ever found my way up north for whatever reason I’d give it some thought if I needed to make some quick money. Not that I only cared about the money. I probably wouldn’t hunt these things myself, if saving their lives was supposed to get you a wish then I can’t imagine that hunting them would earn you any favors from the powers that be. Considering that if it wasn’t for the favor I had built with them I’d be a rotting carcass at the present moment, if I was lucky I’d be in the ground. So if at all possible I was hoping to get on the good side of whoever was in charge of that stuff again, maybe I should go to a church at some point. As I was thinking about what I could do to make sure the universe would tip the scales in my favor there was gleam from the gem and the chute started to rattle, just from the sound you could tell it was going down a series of gentle ramps before it finally skittered out the opening and rolled to a stop on the desk.

“Alright, here it is! You must take this over to the docks and get it over to the ship within a half hour, it won’t be viable if it’s subjected to the heat outside for too long, and again you can NOT touch this with your hands, your body heat will be too much for it. I assume you brought some way to carry it?” I wanted to tell this guy what assuming would do to him but I did actually have just the thing. I shrugged my shoulder and bounced the net down to the desk position before scooping it up with a twist of the wrist. “Yes, how cute. And some way to keep it out of the sun if you please?” It seemed he wasn’t quite impressed with my quick solution.

“Well we could just put a cold wet washcloth over it.” The concept of a washcloth might be a bit forgein to them but it seems like a self explanatory name really. Anything that held water well would do, after all most heat was lost through evaporation so it would be a good way to keep it cool anyway. After a bit of rummaging in a closet somewhere he pulled out a rag and wet it thoroughly before sticking up the chute the egg had come down for a bit which apparently did the trick nicely at getting it nice and chilled. After the cloth was carefully draped over the netted egg we were nigh chased out of the room and told to hurry to the port. 

I wasn’t very worried about our impending time crunch, it seemed we had about twice as much time as we really needed so we shouldn’t have any problems with the clock. If anything bad happened to this egg it’d probably be on the ship. As long as we did our leg in time that’s really all I was concerned with. If the thing hatches and leads a great life that’d be fantastic but if we did our job then the sailors could have it for breakfast tomorrow and I wouldn’t really mind too much. It was getting close to noon so there would be some crowds about but still the walk wouldn’t double in length for that reason. We just had to walk after all, that was it. It wasn’t even like we had to go through a new city, sure we’d never gone between these two specific locations before but we were just going to the port, we could follow the sea breeze or the smell of low tide. Since there was nothing to it but to do it, we started on our way. When we were still on the side streets there weren’t many people to speak of but when we got to more major thoroughfares the traffic was more noticeable. I had Marie walk behind me so she could tell me if anything was happening with the egg and make sure no one else who was prone to bump could get close. It might have been asking the exact wrong person to do the job but after she had been consistent this morning and then the slight situation with the nature of the quest I figured she’d be on her best behavior the rest of the day. It seemed that I was right for the most part because we got to the port without any real issues. By my internal clock we were at most a few minutes behind the estimated 15 minutes so it should be no problem to just find the ship and hand it off. Sounded simple enough, they were probably more informed about what they would be transporting so they really should be more prepared than we were. Not that that was a hard thing to accomplish, after all it was only by happenstance that we had something to carry it so I would hope that they prepared with at least some sort of cold room for it on the ship. I’d let them worry about that but I still needed to get it to them. Getting it to them was what we had to do, all that was left was to hand it off. It was the easiest thing in the world. We can give it to them as soon as we find them. We just needed to find them. The docks were crowded with ships that were on loading or off loading cargo and we weren’t exactly sure where we were supposed to bring this. I knew they were heading north and they were meant to be carrying this egg but I had no idea where the ship was, there were dozens of sloops on the dock we were told to go to and we weren’t given any other descriptors. Not even a name for the ship, this was a pretty tricky predicament. Would it be best to just stick near the start of the dock in case one of the crew came looking for us? They’d be guaranteed to see the nitwit holding an egg in a butterfly net. But if we went up the dock then if they were further toward the start then they would miss us. Ideally I would want to be a little more proactive so we could for sure get this done on time. I was decently worried at this point that they would have another expert there and he’d be able to see the egg is unviable and ruined and it was all our fault and we’d be going to jail because we couldn’t find a ship. I could do this, just collect some information, ask some questions and I would be able to find out which ship was going north to the special facility the old man had talked about. The ship should be outfitted with some amount of cold weather gear, all the sailors probably wouldn’t be wearing parkas while walking around here but any sign of provisions for warm weather would be a good starting point. Maybe it would be some primitive form of an icebreaker, maybe just a specially shaped hull, maybe with a metal point to split the ice. Though I wasn’t sure that where the facility was would be surrounded by ice. But if we saw a ship with one then we should without a doubt investigate further. It should be getting there quickly too, I wasn’t quite sure what sail patterns I should be looking for if we wanted a quick moving ship but I could probably guess which one would be going faster between two ships generally just based on size. Especially if this was their only major cargo other than maybe a resupply for the facility, they wouldn’t be on a giant cargo carrier, but to have the magic frost room it still had to be decently sized to have the space to spare. But it would probably be pretty easy to just ask someone from every ship where their destination was and if they were transporting an egg that looked a lot like the one I had. Heck just screaming out if anyone was looking for an extremely rare and exotic egg I would probably get some decent results. Maybe too many though. From what I had been led to believe sailors have a tendency to be slightly less than scrupulous so I’d most likely get a few too many takers on the presumably very expensive egg. Though they may be reasonable enough to not take it if we were clear that it would be worthless if it didn’t get to the people that are supposed to get it in the next ten minutes. Though the egg yolks could always be some sort of ridiculous aphrodisiac in addition to everything else that the old man was saying, these seemed like some legendary birds so what would one more legend be? 

I probably stood there thinking for too long so I put some hustle in my step as I went to the far end of the dock, looking each of the ships up and down as I passed but I didn’t see much of what I thought I was looking for. There were a few that met some requirements but nothing jumped out at me. The plan I had was thatI’d do a quick check then go back to the start slower and asking some questions so that I could dive deeper into my more initial investigations. Sort of like compiling a list of suspects and then interrogating each of them. At the far end of the dock there was a small little craft, it looked sort of like one of those competition sailboats. It was probably about 30 feet long but compared to everything else here it was downright miniscule. Since this was by far an odd man out from all the other suspects so it wouldn’t hurt to just make sure that this was or wasn’t the one we were looking for. There seemed to be a much smaller crew as well, I really only saw two crewmen. One was busying himself with moving some crates aboard and one was bent over fiddling with something below deck so we could only see his waist and the lower part of his torso. I figured it’d be easier to get the loader’s attention so I positioned myself next to where he had put down his previous box. Once he finished his present trip I cleared my throat and prepared my lead in question.

“Are you guys here with the egg?” Turns out he got the first one off. “Hallelujah! We were starting to get worried that something had happened!” 

“Yea, we just uhh had a little trouble finding the place. But we’re here now and the egg should be a-okay.” I didn’t think I was lying but I was still trying to speak convincingly. If lifting weights could train your Strength stat without leveling up then this should be similar for Charisma. Speaking convincingly should help you speak more convincingly later, and convince someone of the truth was like doing body weight exercises. Hopefully. It really would be great to get some of my poorer stats off of rock bottom without having to waste levels on them. Supposedly each stat had its own experience meter of sorts and doing stuff that involves that trait successfully should raise it and it can level up all on its own just through exercise of it. If I was smart about it I could shore up my bad stats while still being stingy with my actual levels. 

“Hey! You hear that Roy? The egg should be perfect!” I didn’t like the word perfect being put in my mouth, I never said the word perfect. The man in that hatch stood upright.

“Really? That’s great! Now how about we get it secured and then we can get going!” I was impressed with just how positive and enthusiastic these guys were about their work. Maybe that old man was like them once. They pointed out the special pedestal they had secured to the interior of the ship and I gently turned the egg out onto it. Under the pedestal was an intricate looking glyph drawn on the floor, presumably the frost seal or whatever it was. Once it was in they painted one last line on the circle and placed a glassy crystal beside the pedestal in the center of the circle. The crystal let out a whine as they hurriedly closed the hatch and bid us farewell.

“Bon Voyage!” I didn’t share Marie’s enthusiasm just yet, I was still somewhere between curious and worried so as they loosened the lines holding them to the dock I asked them how they would be faring and what the journey up north would be like if they couldn’t go below deck to sleep and just stay warm or what not. I was also a tad nervous that maybe these guys were con artists that heard that this egg would be showing up on the docks today and took advantage of the situation and me too. I figured if they could convince me they knew some details about the trip then I’d be able to rest a little easier. Apparently the trip would only be about two days and they could manage sleeping above deck and they had ample supplies and how it was all for the good of the egg and what not. I was convinced enough to let them go and once they did I could really see why it would only take them two days. It was surprisingly quick, I don’t know if I just had no idea how fast sailboats go or if this had some magic equivalent of an outboard motor or something. 

Satisfied with our job well done, we walked back down the docks and into town. Once we reported back to the old man and the guild we’d be ready to go on our long awaited shopping excursion. I was beaming with pride under my facade that the net had already succeeded so spectacularly where every other weapon would have failed. The versatility that arose when you deemphasized combat ability was all I had hoped it would be, and it could even be enough to carry me to the top. I didn’t have any other odd ball picks lined up for armor, as much as I was comfortable deemphasizing combat, I was equally uncomfortable compromising defense. So I should just be picking out the best stuff I could afford. This time when we went to the old man’s house he was much more welcoming to us, especially when we told him that the egg had been handed off without incident, and he said he even recognized the name Roy as one of the men who would be coming. In fact he was so welcoming that he actually invited us in to sit for a while and if we wanted any refreshments. I was tempted to turn him down or at least take a rain check so we could get on with our day but it seemed that Marie was willing and it was around lunch time so it wouldn’t hurt. Once we were inside it was totally apparent that he was just very stressed about the egg and the whole process that was going on, though now he may have overcorrected. If I had to guess he was still a bit crotchety on the day to day but not quite like we saw him earlier. He didn’t have much to offer us, it seemed that in the work-life balance aspect that work was winning big time with him and since it seemed he lived here too there wasn’t much in the way of comfort. He had given us some water and a quick bite to eat while we told him about how the trip went before he told us more about what he did, he was as he called it a “fantastical zoologist” it seemed akin to what was called a cryptozoologist back home but here the stuff was real. He was concerned with all animals that had some sort of legend or magic behind them. I was unsure whether he’d like to hear about how I killed a Parandus, on one hand that was a close encounter with a magical animal but on the other hand it was about how I killed it. I figured I would once he finished telling us about how he came to specialize in the Northern Ice Fowl, and namely how he came to specialize in it here of all places. The facility up north where he sent the egg was where a majority of the research took place on this particular animal, this was initially set up as something as just an office for him to research some other fauna in the area but then the new mother upstairs sort of fell into his lap so he had no choice but to stay because she was in no condition to travel and probably never would be. It had been mistreated by poachers and if he didn’t get it from them when he did then she wouldn’t have made it at all. The story of how he got it seemed a lot more interesting than he cared to go into detail about. I started to recount our experience with the Parandus and he seemed rather enthralled by it, he said he would have liked to see it in person but it wasn’t much of a loss. Since they couldn’t reproduce it wasn’t like I had made a permanent impact on the population, and he seemed to get a kick out of it when I wished I had seen it too. But the main magic thing about them was the fur and that had been mostly studied as much as it possibly could be and there was still no major knowledge about how it worked so the only thing that would yield interesting results is if some new research method was developed. It was frankly pretty interesting stuff to hear even if a fair amount of it was retreading what we had learned at the library, though that could well be because this guy wrote or peer reviewed some of the books the librarian read. Getting information from a primary source was interesting in general but after about an hour of discussion we were running dry on topics so we decided it was about time we excused ourselves. 

Turning in the quest was easy enough and it felt good to get another financial windfall even if the experience gain wasn’t really much to talk about. When we asked the person behind the counter about what armorers they recommend they just gave us a mass produced pamphlet and acted like they had totally resolved our concern. In a way it did because all of the shops had a list of directions for how to get there from the guild. Anything else we could ask them in person, sure getting a rundown on who had good prices or an excellent return policy would have been nice but I guess that isn’t what the guild hired people for. Anyway it wouldn’t be much of a shopping trip if we just went to the place that sounded best, getting to see all the different stores and how they were different would be half the fun. We went to the closest place first which seemed to advertise itself as the number one place trusted by members of the guild, since they didn’t provide any real criteria on that front I was not exactly trusting of that claim. Even if that was true, a lot of the guild members were absolute saps so I shouldn’t be putting too much stock in their decision. 

“Wow! It’s lucky we came here first! This one is the most trusted armorer among guild members!” I guess as they say there’s one born every minute. The man inside tending the store was standing over an anvil wearing an apron and holding a hammer despite having no project on the anvil. Just judging by how pristine the anvil looked I was pretty confident that he didn’t actually do any of the smithing. He had black hair that was slicked back and he was probably in his early thirties. He gave me the impression that he was very much a wheeler-dealer type, like he’ll do anything to loosen an individual’s wallet. Nothing really made me trust him other than the fact that he was selling what I was looking to buy, though that was on the surface. I could already imagine ordering one thing and getting another only to be told that this was better than what I wanted, in short this guy would be selling me an undercoat if we had met in a previous life. Without getting too deep into my initial reactions to this guy I figured we should start a conversation with him about why we came in here in the first place.

“We were looking to pick up some basic armor.” I knew that telling these types what exactly you were looking for was a mistake as was telling them how much you had to spend or even just giving off any hints of how badly you needed it. Come in as blase as possible so that they were expecting you to walk out at any time. The only way to properly reason with personalities like this was the threat of denying them the sale, if they try to screw you on one thing then threaten to call the whole deal off. When they see you losing interest and catching them on their underhandedness they’ll go to great lengths to try and keep you. Of course all of that was irrelevant if he didn’t actually have anything we’d like to buy. 

“Of course! Of course! Come right this way, I’ll show you some of our most popular items!” It figures that he would be trying to sell us his popular items rather than trying to get us something that suits our needs. I really wasn’t too confident that we would be buying anything from this guy, I’d much rather buy from someone who had more pro-consumer practices. I had always heard older people talking about how they always shopped local and how small business were the lifeblood of a community and everything but I was always more partial to the impersonality and laissez-faire approach of the giant multinationals so I could go in and do what I wanted without having someone try to help me. But maybe all I needed to change my mind was an encounter with this fella. Or maybe I could just make choices on a case by case basis, now there was a novel thought. Either way this guy was half way through giving us the full tour of items that were fastened to the grate, it was all the lowest grade metal there was, in a town for beginners like this of course what sells is whatever is cheapest, and then since it’s popular all the other rubes will only feed into that further. I really didn’t want to just agree to buy a whole starter set of whatever has the highest profit margin, most of this stuff didn’t seem like it’d really even protect you all that much, it all had just enough metal rigged up by leather straps that it wouldn’t just qualify as leather armor. There wouldn’t be much more resistance, if an animal with any real bite force got you in that their teeth would either go straight through the leather or slip off the miniscule iron plates and studs. I’d rather spend a little more and get something that would actually protect me, and I doubt this guy was even looking to undercut the competition. Maybe I had checked out a tad early on this and I didn’t give him a fair shake but unless we really stuck out on the rest of the places I don’t think it would matter all too much. I just had to find a convenient exit strategy, if I were alone I would really have no problem just walking out of here while the guy was still talking, it’s not like he was gonna chase me down or something and if he did what would he really do? Yell at me? That wouldn’t stop me from walking away more. But since I was here with someone else I at least needed some way to telegraph my intent to her. Even just saying that we had to go do something would be just fine, she should either be clever enough to get the hint or dense enough to think it was the truth, you never could tell which way this girl would go. But first I’d need to find an opening to say something and with the whirlwind pace this guy was keeping up it didn’t seem like he’d make it easy for me. At least when he finished explaining his collection he would probably ask us what we thought or something and that would be a perfect time to just bail. All that there was to do was to just wait for that time. It seemed like he’d be winding down soon until he turned the display around and began to tell of all the features of this set, made specifically for ranged combatants or something surely. Of course by “made specifically” he meant the closest thing to mass production they had these days. I’m sure there are plenty of apprentices in the back all working on the same piece all day, day in and day out until they get as efficient at it as possible even if they weren’t exactly good at actually making it yet. There was a reason why trades would be taught in one-on-one arrangements over years and years. None of his wares looked exactly up to the quality I would want for things that are the deciding factor between life and death for me in my chosen line of work. Thinking of adventuring as a line of work was sort of a strange thought to me. As someone who had spent a literal lifetime despising the prospect of employment and needing to work for a living I had fantasized about doing this for nearly as long. Maybe because I hadn’t actually needed to spend any significant amount of money yet that I hadn’t exactly felt that I was a slave to my job yet. I really didn’t want to have to do it every day just in order to scrape by, especially with a job as inconsistent as this. Seems like a great way to burn out, though that’s why they say what they do about mixing business and pleasure. I just hoped I could make my exit onto easy street before that happened. Or else I would just grow to hate what I had fantasized about doing for years. Maybe I should be prepared to take up another job just to avoid getting burnt out so that I can swap between them whenever I felt the crushing reality of having a real job starting to creep in. The second job would have to be something in something of similar structure, namely that I wouldn’t need to be doing it every day and working directly under someone else. Having a boss seemed like the fastest way to hate what you’re doing. There wouldn’t be much else like that in these times, even in my world there wasn’t much that could be totally viable while still checking all the boxes. Producing some sort of creative content would be an option but I wasn’t exactly skilled at anything and even if I was good enough to get noticed then I’d probably just get hired by nobles to do things for them which would just lead me to having a boss again, and then it would be a boss that’s used to having their way in every aspect of life. Or be a public performer, which is the only job less consistent than gig work like adventuring. Even though it did seem to totally buck every criteria I had set previously there was always civil service work. Maybe I’d look in to that when there wouldn’t be much adventuring work, or I just didn’t want to go outside. I had never really thought about what I would be doing with my life in a number months before outside of anticipating new releases so they seemed like the true death of the old me, I was now someone that thought ahead and had an idea of what he would like to do that didn’t involve escapism. Maybe that’s what happened when you were forced to listen to some guy trying to swindle you yammering on about stuff you don’t really care about for what felt like an hour by now. But if my eyes weren’t deceiving me he was gesticulating at the final item of the package. 

“So now that you’ve seen…”

“That all looks wonderful but we actually have to go do something, thanks for your time.” I practically yanked Marie out of there by the collar. She seemed confused but as I explained why I didn’t feel confident buying anything from him it was made pretty clear that she wasn’t really listening either. 

The next place on the list gave me a better feeling from right out of the gate, instead of boasting about their bulk sales on their signage there was instead a small subheading carved into the wooden sign about how they had been in operation for over eighty years so I was much more willing to trust the tradition on this matter. When we went in there was immediately the sounds of iron being hammered and water steaming off of molten metal. It seemed like the owner was in the back, presumably with his apprentice showing him something. I had heard about some professional smiths would train their apprentices for years just on how to properly keep a fire and how to chop wood for the coals. The dedication that the real artisans put in to keep traditions alive was probably greater than the work the guy at the other shop was putting in. Granted to those people they’re acting as upholders of those traditions whereas even the people here were treating this as a profession, one will be much more strict about how things are done. These people must have been doing something right to still be in business so long but they are probably still willing to make changes and adapt so they can be around another eighty years. If the people only concerned with upholding tradition had been around thousands of years ago would they be insisting on carving tools out of rocks and bones still? You can take pride in the way the old things were done without treating it like it’s all that matters. It was also easy to see why so many people used to become philosophers because when I wasn’t being so grossly overstimulated with everything I was doing I sure was thinking a lot about human nature and all that other type of stuff. We waited for a minute before knocking on the counter lightly. With all the noise back there I really wouldn’t be surprised if it was for nothing but after another minute or so the hammering paused for a moment before resuming and a slightly less sure candor. An older man emerged from the curtain leading to the back, he seemed to be somewhat stereotypical looking, fitting squarely into the old haggard master craftsman type. Like always he was somewhat withered and hunched over but you could tell in his prime he was an absolute powerhouse and even now he retained much of that strength despite the toll the years have taken on him. He was dressed in a long tunic with a fraying and soot stained leather apron tied around his waist. Despite his grim looking body and serious demeanor he still seemed rather welcoming to customers.

“Hello there, squirts. What’s your pleasure today?” However many times he had engaged in greeting potential patrons his eyes told that he still wasn’t bored of it, he recognized it as an extension of his craft.

“We were looking for some basic armor, anything would be an improvement over what we’ve got so we’re interested in whatever gets us the most bang for our buck.” Maybe it’s because of how open he was with us or since he did look exactly how I had imagined him that I felt like I already knew him and thus had no real problem revealing our needs to him. 

“Greenhorns eh? Well let’s see what we can do for you…” He came around the counter and pulled a measuring tape from a pouch on his apron. As much as I myself was interested in knowing Marie’s measurements I didn’t quite understand why he was doing it. Before revealing myself as an ignoramus I thought it over for a bit and remembered a time when I was younger and my mom had taken me to a tailor to get a suit hemmed, or whatever was actually happening, for a cousin’s wedding and I had been measured similarly there. It stuck with me because I was mystified by why we couldn’t just get something off the rak and try it on like the rest of my clothes. Was he planning on making armor just for us? Sure that showed he must have been pretty skilled and dedicated too but that sounds like it would just run up the bill quicker than I would really like, not to mention it would take a lot more time. I’d really rather just get something already made. He was already running the tape from my ankles to my shoulders before I said anything.

“Thank you very much for the offer, but we were looking for something that was already made if you have anything, I’d really like to be able to wear it out of the store. After all in our line of work, going without armor for a week or so may mean we won’t be here to pick it up when it’s done ya know?” I think my reasoning sounded rather, well, reasonable. The only thing to see would be if he thought so too.

“I hear what you’re saying.” He rolled his tape back up and put a finger to his chin. “I try not to make it a habit to make more than I know I’ll get orders for so I don’t keep much of a battle-ready stock. Though, call it coincidence, call it serendipity, I do happen have something sitting in the back now.” This seemed like a good sign, there didn’t seem to be much hope that he’d be wheeling out a full suit of armor that he’d be willing to part with for anything within our budget but it did sound like he’d be willing to give us a deal on whatever he did have just to get it out of his store. He came back out holding a single bluish gray vambrace. “A fella came in here and ordered a set of these not long ago but when he came to pick them up he had lost an arm and as such didn’t have any use for this one. If you don’t mind the macabre history of the thing then I’ll let you have it, under cost even.” I’d really like something more comprehensive than a single vambrace but it sounded like I wouldn’t get a price better than this anywhere. If my knowledge of how armor worked was sound then the more bluish-purplish it was, the better it would be at protecting you so I was pretty sure that this was high quality fantasty-type metal. Probably made from dragon calluses or something. Even with the deal though I wasn’t sure whether it would be reasonable to spend such a large portion of our budget on one piece of gear. At very least I should probably discuss it with my party considering that we were both meant to be getting equipment with it and technically she had earned half of the money. 

“Excuse me one moment.”

“Take your time.” I gave a small smile to the smith as I guided Marie into a corner of the shop. 

“I really think we should take him up on this, we aren’t gonna be able to afford something like this for a long time otherwise. We’ve made it this far on what we’ve got so we should be able to get this much money again and when we do then we can get a full set of gear for each of us. This one piece of armor would probably cost more than a whole set usually.” Sure in a game the logic would be infallible, where your defense points were all just dumped into a pool and any attack had to contend with that pool so you’d just want the most defense points to dollar ratio. But in the real fantasy world it mattered what was being attacked so if you weren’t bundled up there you’d be out of luck. Maybe I needed some more convincing myself…

“Okay.” Did that really convince her? “As long as I get to decide how we spend the rest of the money for the day.” As absolutely dastardly as that was it was also entirely fair. If I was gonna splurge on a single item I gave up my half of the money in a way. It did worry me a bit that she seemed ready with that condition, as if she had been thinking all day about doing something she knew I would veto. As frightened of that prospect as I was, I couldn’t turn it down if this was the one thing standing in my way.

“Deal.” I felt my heart sink a bit as I agreed but I was ready to eat my just desserts. I turned back to the old man at the counter and let him know that we had come to the decision to go with it. When he gave the price I was pretty taken aback but I figured that it was going to be well worth it, this seems like it will be of the same caliber as the legendary equipment that you’d find out in dungeons, after all if what I had been lead to believe was true and previous forgotten civilizations were more in tune with magic then probably the best armor you could get wouldn’t be coming from a craftsman but either found out in the wild or at best at a reseller. But this should really be more than enough to protect me from anything in this starter town, though just in an admittedly very limited area. But when you consider that most things aren’t going to be shooting arrows at your center of mass and would rather be chomping at whatever you put in front of their face guarding your arm seemed like one of the more important things there was. Either way, that’s what I had a healer for. I doubt she would be able to fix a dismembered arm at this level so it’d be best to prevent that in general. Besides, anything fatal may just be a temporary setback and my ticket to another world of fantasy. I gave him a fistful of dollars and took the possibly cursed arm guard from him. I put it on immediately to try to ward off any chance there was that as the new owner I’d be fated to lose the same arm. It was a bit big for me but after a bit of experimenting with the straps I got it to point where it had no risk of flying off my wrist if I moved my hand too quickly. I liked that the metal went nearly all the way around which meant that if my arm found its way into a waiting and hungry pair of jaws that I wouldn’t have to fear about the underside of my arm being torn into. I’d probably have plenty else to fear about in that scenario so anything that could take some pressure off would be well appreciated. But for now I had a much greater worry, namely in following and keeping up with Marie as she practically skipped off in one direction or another. Maybe letting her totally off the leash was a terrible idea but on the other hand it may be interesting to see where her flights of fancy take her. You could probably learn a good amount about someone by where they go and what they do when they know you’re honor bound to not say no. I couldn’t imagine her taking me anywhere absurd like a love hotel or something but maybe I’d get some juicy gossip or something. She did seem to be heading towards the upscale end of town so I wouldn’t be surprised if she had long fantasized about having a decent chunk of pocket money to be able to spend on frivolity and having a “princess” experience. I suppose that she had earned it, a life of hard work on the farm and living on a modest household income, not to mention putting up with me for the past week or so. She deserved it so I wasn’t going to be too much of a wet blanket during the experience but I knew it may end up being necessary to make sure she doesn’t start thinking she can actually act and spend money like a princess outside of today and even then she can’t get everything her heart desires. 

My hypothesis seemed to be accurate as we came to a rather posh looking boutique with a large front window and some expensive looking dresses and gowns on display. I just hoped that she wouldn’t end up getting something that she would never actually get a chance to wear. I held my tongue the whole time we were in the store, when she would gush to me about how enchanting something was or how much she’d love to wear something else I would merely give an affirmative grunt or nod my head. There was no way I would be able to hold half a conversation about most of this stuff so I was going to let her hold one with herself for as long as possible. It was an often maligned experience to go shopping with your wife or girlfriend or whatever and I was starting to see why. There was no greater show of the gender rift between men and wome than how women could enjoy looking at different colored pieces of cloth for hours on end. I hadn’t exactly grown to hate the process but I certainly felt no desire to partake in it at any length greater than I had to. She seemed to be particularly attracted to anything with any amount of glitter, it was a somewhat funny thought to picture her getting her hands on a bedazzler and soon everything in her path becoming a blinding wave of plastic reflectivity. After she got through gawking at more or less everything in the store we walked out without buying anything, as surprised as I was that she didn’t tap into the blank check I had effectively written her I was equally relieved that she didn’t end up spending a ludicrous amount on formal where that she wouldn’t be able to use for the foreseeable future. Since I had been thinking about how to weasel my way into the upper class since I got here I wasn’t in any place to judge her for her fantasies about being able to wear outfits that cost more than her house. Bringing her to the top with me had always been more or less assumed in all of my models of the future so I guess we’d both be getting our way as long as my scheming hits pay dirt. As much as I told myself that it was only a matter of when and not if I still wasn’t seeing as much of a result as I had hoped. That could probably be accredited to the fact that I had been sticking to conventional means so far, I needed to do something that has the possibility for huge payoffs. Save for one specific quest, I couldn’t really see that happening through adventuring, it was time to tap into some of my more crafty schemes. I had at least a notebook full of plots and ideas on how to make enough money to live comfortably for life, but most of that was useless in the current environment. Sure I couldn’t buy broken s**t online, fix it up, and resell it but I could still repurpose my old ideas. Which made me think, if I couldn’t use my old ideas maybe I could use other people’s even older ideas. Why take a risk with something I come up with when I can take that I know works and has a proven track record of being a major success and do that. I’d be able to beat everyone to the punch with things that probably wouldn’t be thought up for hundreds of years. It’d be a bit hard to find what I can and can’t do considering how complicated some of my modern conveniences were and how they needed so many other prerequisites, but I’m sure I could think of a few things that I could work out even on my own. In fact I had already had an idea for how I could use my particular knowledge set, I had just been waiting to execute it. Maybe now was the time to fast track that plan and instead of waiting for the iron to get hot to strike, rather I should make it hot by striking. 

I spent the rest of our shopping excursion thinking in meticulous detail about how I would want to execute it. I’d need a few things but getting them should be no trouble even in this world, the rest would be down to me and how much work I would be putting in. I only realized that we were in another store and actually making a purchase when Marie tried to reach her hand into my pocket presumably to take money the boutique worker had asked for. It seems we had worked our way down to one of the more sensibly priced and stocked stores but I doubt that meant we would be getting a bargain, especially with the armful of garments Marie was clutching against her body. Though from a glance at the stack it seemed they were all items that could be reasonably worn on the day to day. At least I didn’t think there was anything with a train or whatever else would get in the way and make wearing it in any situation where you won’t have a handler unfeasible. Things you could actually walk in and perform actions outside in. I was somewhat happy with the reasonability of her selection but still I was committed to my vow of silence. She got a bag to take home her haul in and we were on our way. We were sort of tapped out for cash now and I don’t know if I would go as far as to say it was worth it but it was nice to see that Marie was as pleased as I had ever seen her. I felt like I had sort of been the weak link here and the main reason why we weren’t both walking home in nice, sturdy, sets of armor but it was worth it to invest ahead. Hopefully.

End of Day Report

Start:       ¤370.00

-¤15.00 Net

  ¤75.00 Egg Quest

-¤175.00 Vambrace

-¤200.00 Clothes

Change:  -¤315.00

End:         ¤ 55.00