How to Succeed In Business in a New World

Into Town

“How did you sleep?”

“Oh, fine.” I wasn’t about to tell her about the splinters so I’d leave it at that. Marie had given me a set of her father’s clothes that he didn’t wear anymore and we were on our way into town. We were taking the wagon with a few containers of milk and eggs, from what Marie told me it seemed that they made trips into town every few days and it was uncommon for them to go on two consecutive days but she was willing to bend the rules a bit for me. 

“So what are you looking to do in town?” I still wasn’t quite sure myself.

“I know I want to join an adventurer’s guild, but other than that I’m looking to earn some money to actually do some adventuring.” This would be another critical juncture, the ever daunting task of picking a class. I was never one for frontline classes, too center of attention for me. But if I was going to be questing solo it might be a necessity. At the same time maybe a ranged class would be better, after all the hit points were actually mine now. Getting up close and personal with horrible beasties wouldn’t be my ideal way to fight. As much as it made me sound like a tourist it wouldn’t feel right if I didn’t learn some magic, after all I could have gotten good with a sword at home.

“I can show you where the adventurer’s guild is. It’s just off the main square, we’ll be right near it when we go to the market. As for making money I can ask some of the shop owners if they need any temporary help.” I nodded in thanks as the cart jostled its way along the rough dirt road. 

The ride was a few minutes longer than yesterday since I ran into her while she was already on her way back but the time did pass quickly, especially once the town was in sight. I tried to soak up as much about it as I possibly could. It wasn’t much to look at but I could gather that it was a somewhat recent construction or at least fairly well maintained. When we got to the gate Marie talked to one of the guards briefly but it seemed to be as much pleasantries as official business. They seemed to have met before and the guard was surprised to see her making a run without her father and he made some comment about how he remembered when she was a little girl. They chuckled a bit together and they opened one of the smaller gates for us. There was a large set of gates each with smaller ones cut out so they didn’t have to open the full thing for every pedestrian. On the other side was the stereotypical fantasy architecture, buildings packed in along the street, two or three stories tall and the road was paved beige cobblestone. Looking down some of the sidestreets this was something of an extraordinary case as one of the main boulevards. It was still early in the morning so the streets weren’t very populated but storefronts and stalls were getting things ready for the day of business ahead. The bustle did give a bit of anxiety but no one really paid us any particular mind. Good to know I was fitting in at least on the surface. Though I guess they couldn’t afford to waste time gawking at every passerby, this was a place where you had to work for a living after all. Not to mention since this was a beginner town so fresh faces were probably the backbone of their economy. We rode through a large open area with a fountain in the center and lined with various stalls. I imagine that this was the main square I had heard about. If we had taken a left the road would have stayed permanently widened leading up to another set of walls surrounding a palatial building, presumably the seat of the local government. Ideally I would be staying out of politics for sometime, hopefully forever. Buying a title and retiring to a country villa would be nice though.

After passing through the square we came into the market and parked, the stalls were so densely packed and laid out like a maze that it’d be nearly impossible to get through except on foot.

“Here we are!” Marie cheerfully dismounted, climbed into the back and started handing me things to hold. Once I was burdened with as much as I could feasibly carry Marie grabbed the rest and led the way through the labyrinth of mongers and marketeers. I could only see her so well over the pile of produce I had been laden with but the rest of the foot traffic steered clear of me. She came to a halt in front of an older looking guy. He had a bush of a gray mustache coming down from a bulbous nose, he was entirely bald on his scalp but had a ring of straggling follicles surrounding. The gruff looking man was standing beside a lightly populated stall of other foodstuffs which we got to populating. He was rearranging things as quickly as I could put them down, apparently he didn’t appreciate the job I was doing but I was more concerned with not spilling things all over everything else he already had. 

“So who’s this new kid?” He was still busily shuffling things about as he queried Marie about me.

“Silly me!” She giggled childishly at her own perceived blunder. “This is Katsuo. I met him outside of town and he helped out around the farm yesterday. Would you happen to know anyone who could use an extra set of hands?” Even with my back turned I could feel her giving him weapons grade puppy dog eyes. He let an exasperated breath as if that was the only way he would be able to survive the assault from the absolute beauty before him. 

“Well… I’ll ask around, see what I can do. Maaaaybe pull a few strings for the kid.” I had just finished placing the last of our haul in the presentation boxes in time to see her embracing the old man and the old man trying to not have a heart attack or putting all of his effort into remembering he has a wife, it was hard to tell. Once she detached her erotic deathgrip he handed over a handful of coins and we were on our way. 

The guild was only a few blocks away so we went over on foot. The plan was that we’d see what I would have to do to enroll, I couldn’t imagine it was free considering the fact that there weren’t really any other requirements. The guild structure had never really been portrayed exceptionally accurately but if my assumptions about this world were right, and it was based more on the games and novels I spent hours on then historical accuracy wouldn’t be much of a concern. After seeing what I’d need we’d look for an apothecary to pick something for her dad and then we’d go back to the old guy and see if he had found any work for me to do. My first full day here and I already had a list of errands to run. We came to a large round building that took up a whole block on its own and had a sign hanging out front advertising it as the place to be for all adventurers, be they inexperienced and pros. Once through the double doors we were greeted by the few employees that were out walking the floor, taking chairs down from tables and the like. It seemed they were just opening up. A few geared up individuals were standing in groups, presumably parties preparing to get an early start on a quest. There was a counter on the other side of the room with a rather bored look attendant. 

“Hello, I’m looking to join the guild.” I had been rehearsing for this moment the whole way here and I still sounded like a wiener.

“Fill out this form, guild entry fee is 25 ducats and dues are 10 due at the first of every month.” He slipped me a piece of paper and rattled off the price tag all while still looking into space. 

“Heheh, I don’t suppose I would be able to pay the entry fee at some other time could I?” There was no chance that would work.

“No entry fee, no entry.” He took the form from my hands and placed back onto the stack he had plucked it from. Dejected, we turned and made our way out. I don’t know why Marie took it so rough, I suppose it was possible she had gotten as attached to me as I had gotten to her. Well, we were expecting this outcome so it wasn’t much of a tragedy but when I looked over for her to lead the way to the next stop I saw her face down trying to subtly count the coins she had gotten from the old man. 

“Hey, hey! What are you doing?” She looked up suddenly, shocked that she was caught.

“Oh I just thought that if I could-”

“You don’t need to do that, that’s yours. I’m sure I can figure out some other way to get some cash…” I tried to reassure her but at least at first my tone was almost angry. Angry at this girl because she was trying to do something nice for me. “Let’s just look for some medicine…” The sooner we could focus on something else the less awkward it would make me feel. I really didn’t want to impose on this poor girl but I probably shouldn’t have gotten upset with her.

As she led the way through the increasingly busy streets my emotions were only getting more muddled, if it wasn’t bad enough that I wanted to apologize to her for being angry but still stand by what I had said and everything else… I had to watch her ass saunter along the whole morning. Whatever deities they had here, all of them must have worked their hardest on making the most spectacular body possible. She ought to be a nun or something just to properly thank the powers that be for their blessings. Though maybe I just wanted the chance to see her in a nun outfit… This place definitely wasn’t doing my libido any favors.

“Here’s where we usually go when we need medicine or healing herbs.” I was so lost in thought that I hadn’t noticed her stop and in those few brief fleeting seconds when my body was pressed against her flesh I felt like I was going to die again. I stammered out an apology as quickly as I could and hoped she didn’t think I did it on purpose. I stepped into the shop as quickly as I could in order to change the topic. The actual area for customers was small in part thanks to the shelves all along the walls and in the center of the room, there was just enough space for one person to maneuver around and even then they’d have to be careful not to bump anything off the cluttered shelves. I scooted my way through the shop scanning the wares. I didn’t really understand much of it, there were charms and potions and powders and even a salve or two. My main problem was that not many of them were labeled and I’ll be damned if I knew the difference between anything here, it went beyond my extensive gamer knowledge of red being health and blue being magic. Sometimes green for stamina. But what the heck would this orange powder do? As I rounded the corner back towards the door Marie greeted the shopkeeper. He had a very angular face and a small pair of glasses mounted on his nose.

“Good Morning Mr. Sirupt.” 

“What seems to be troubling you today Miss Marie?” He seemed like a nice guy, sensitive to the fact that Marie wasn’t in the best mood, though it’d be pretty much required if your main clientele was people dealing with illness close to them.

She described the situation and the symptoms and the man behind the counter mulled it over with a finger to his chin. “I don’t think I have anything on hand that can fix that up. Afraid I can’t say for certain what’s the matter but I can give you something to dull the pain a bit.” After a bit of rooting around behind the counter he presented a vial of powder and a pamphlet of instructions. It felt like a betrayal, why would there be a retro pharmacy in this world? What happened to the nebulous concept HP? What’s the point of medicine of if there are lesser curing spells and what not? Talk about an absolute jip, I want to be able to come back from the brink of death with a perfectly timed potion pop. But I couldn’t very well just ask for that from people that had lived here their whole lives and had no concept of a keybind or anything. If I could think of some way to ask about it without asking about it then I could get the answers I wanted. As I pondered how I could do such a thing my eyes drifted toward the ceiling, on the top shelf there was a hefty looking book with a red cover and musty browned pages. I was principally interested in what the book was even about, given the nature of the shop I assumed it would be related to herblore or something else curative. I figured if I could at least skim through it and see what plants had a use I could make a couple bucks foraging. Regrettably the top shelf was just out of reach. Or at least it would have been if I were about eight inches taller. I had spent much of my later puberty years wishing that but sadly it was still yet to pay off. 

“Hey, could I get a hand here?” Marie had just dumped a handful of coins on the counter but came over to see if she could get it. I wasn’t exactly asking for her help, after all I was taller than her if only barely, and it wasn’t her fault that this guy had stocked his wares in such an inconvenient manner. I had been hoping that stick they have to get stuff off high shelves at stores had already been invented but the man who would be the wielder of that stick was heading into the back, maybe to get the stick. After a moment of arm stretching effort from Marie we resigned to finding some other way. There was nothing to use as a stool and climbing the shelves seemed like a recipe for disaster. So that left us to figure something out with just the two of us to utilize. There were two options, either I go down on all fours or I boost her up on my shoulders. I knew which was more appealing. “C’mon, get on my shoulders.” I felt a bit moronic just squatting there while she had that look of hesitation but who was the moron in the end because she did it after all. Standing up was the part I didn’t think so much about, and if the burn in my thighs wasn’t enough to distract me then her thighs definitely were. I had always fantasized about being friends with a girl with a body like this but now that I hadn’t I couldn’t stop realizing the consequences. 

“Got it!” She cheered out and I breathed a sigh of relief as I tried to come down as slowly as possible and not knock over the entire store. It seemed my one day of manual labor had paid dividends, I would be a paragon of musculature yet. Once I was upright and unburdened we took a look into the book. Upon flipping to a random page in the middle I was briefly worried that all of that had been for a book in some other language. There were bizarre and intricate characters swarming about the page with seemingly no rhyme or reason. “Oooh it’s instructions for restoration magic!” 

“Wait, you can read these sigils?” I was more astounded than anything, a simple farm girl who seemed not too bright to begin with could read these magic symbols? Did they teach this stuff in school here or something? Did she even go to school?

“No but I can read the spine.” I suppose I walked right into that. Sure enough the spine did mark it as an introduction to restoration and healing magics. I was interested to start learning about the magic system in this world, I was hoping it was fairly easy to just be dabbled into and you didn’t need to dedicate years of study to master a single spell. With how it was heralded as an introduction it would make sense if you could learn a good handful of magic techniques just from this one book. Which thinking more about it…

“Hey! Why don’t we get this book and see if we can do something for your dad?” Letting my mind wander like that was rarely of benefit so, this being one of the few times it was, I was rightfully excited to suggest it. It seemed that Marie was shocked too because she immediately called out to the shopkeeper.

“Mr. Sirupt! Oh, Mr. Sirupt!” Once he emerged from the back doorway which seemed to be his workshop she asked him what the price for the book would be.

“I couldn’t tell you how many years I’ve had that thing, if you had just walked out with it I wouldn’t have come after you. But I’m sorry little lady. I can only sell that to someone who’s registered with the adventurer’s guild, there are all sorts of rules about magic stuff to keep it from getting into the wrong hands. But that doesn’t do all too much if the rules are being written by the wrong hands...” It sounded like he had some strong opinions about something in there but he wasn’t going to go on a tirade on two kids. “...but for you, if you got that Guild Card, I’d let you have it for say… fifteen ducats, as long as you promise not to go and get rid of all my business.” She began counting the change in her palm again and after a moment spoke up and presented the vial she had just purchased.

“Could I return this for store credit please?” The way she batted her eyes I knew she had a plan and it’d be a cold day in hell if it were to fail.

She practically skipped the whole way back to the Guild Hall and I couldn’t blame her, this was a splendid confluence of opportunity and necessity. The setting of our prior defeat was now going to be a scene hand washing the other. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t smiling myself. This was my first real time completing a set of tasks in this new world, all of this stuff would have been grouped under the tutorial section in any game, I’d be dusting my hands of it in single digit minutes. But here it took days plural to get it all squared away, and that only made the sense of accomplishment all the sweeter. At this moment I really felt I could get used to doing things for myself if it would feel this good when the plan came together like this. We strode into the large hall with an unshakable confidence, despite the few minutes we had to wait on line and the fact that there were some rather rowdy patrons at the bar and dining area off to the side. Our shine wasn’t dulled when we reached the front of the line and came face to face with the same bored teenager behind the counter. My excitement was welling up in my throat and I had the perfect opportunity to let it as I opened my mouth and declared—

“One guild admission form please~” Except… I wasn’t the one who said it. I turned to Marie shocked but she had already busied herself with filling out the form.

“What are you doing?” I hissed at her through the side of my mouth. 

“I’m joining the guild…” The plan that I thought was so beautiful it didn’t need explaining obviously did, mainly to me. 

“I thought I was going to join and buy the book.” 

“Well you didn’t want me to pay for you to join earlier so I figured I’d just do it myself. I thought you wanted to pay your own way, didn’t you?” If I had even the slightest suspicion she was doing this on purpose I would’ve strangled her on the spot. She had so flawlessly exposed the flaws in my reasoning that I was forced to stew silently. She checked boxes and divulged her mother’s maiden name without a care in the world while mine was crashing down at least a little. There was nothing I could do. It did really just put me back to square one, I just needed a job to join the guild, but having the taste of the high made the low that much more souring. “What do you think I should pick for class? I feel like I’d make a good cleric.” 

“Well if you’re starting with restoration magic that sounds like a good idea…” My power gamer side took over by instinct but I soon recognized that this girl who I had just met, and had lived here for a dozen and a half years or so, and as such had unending opportunities to join had just beaten me to the punch at fulfilling one of my major power fantasies. But the power gamer took back over as I realized that if I could play my cards just right from here I could not get a party started but I’d even be starting with a pocket support class. This wasn’t so bad a situation after all I suppose. So I could call this square one and a half.

We headed back to the farm after buying the book, we were supposed to stop by the market again but we decided we would both rather see how the book would work out. Besides, if we gave the old man a full day to ask around, the odds of success were better at least in theory. By the time we left the town was really starting to bustle a bit. On the way home I cracked open the book and started studying the very basics of magic and casting. From the peek I got into the system it seemed fairly standard but it did have a fairly fluid structure in that it encouraged combining various spells for boosted or new effects. The progression wasn’t anything shocking, higher level spells required more to cast with more verses in the incantation or even intricate rituals with sacrifices. But as you gained experience you’d be able to cast more easily to the point where a wave of the hand can replace several verses and eventually even just a thought. It seemed like a pretty fair system, not that it was designed with that in mind or anything. It’s not like there were developers working on it and making sure it was sound from a game design perspective. When we got back Marie started making lunch and had me read to her from the book. She really seemed serious about this, I suppose she should be considering she might have just actually bet the farm on this. I tried to be as supportive as I could but really all I could do was read to her. From what the people at the guild told us Marie would be naturally skilled at restoration magic because she scored highly for empathy. I was also technically banned from practicing magic from what it sounded like. Considering the fact that I had literally no proof of existence in the eyes of the government that might have not been a terrible idea. I really wasn’t trying to get in any trouble so I’d play by the rules as much as I could for now, rocking the boat would only lead to problems. I kept reading aloud through and after lunch, I’d offered to let her read herself but she seemed to be absorbing more or so she said. We started with the introductions for each chapter so we could get an idea what spell we should be using, once we found one that seemed like a good catchall we went on to practice. Minor pin pricks to start but once those were down pat… She took a knife and drew the blade slowly across her palm, she had tears in her eyes and I tried to stop her but the look she gave me told me that she wanted this pain. If it was a step to get rid of her father’s she’d bear it, and bear it gladly. The blood oozed through her clenched fingers slowly as she read from the book. Sure enough when she opened her hand and wiped her palm clean the flow had stopped. She ran into the other room with a smile on her face and tears still in her eyes. By the time I had followed her she was already chanting the incantation. There was a brief glow coming forth from her hand flowing toward her father’s abdomen. The incantation was long and the suspense was building with every word. Her intensity was increasing right alongside it, by the end she was nearly shouting but was still taking great care in enunciating every syllable. When she finished she let out a long sigh, it was obvious that the ordeal had taken a lot out of her, emotionally and physically. According to the book the biggest reason not to attempt spells that were out of your experience level was that they’d drain your energy too much, even to the point of death. Imagine trying to cast a spell and you drop dead right in the middle of it. I suppose it’s only a mistake you’d make once. But at my urging Marie went right to bed though she wasn’t hard to convince. 

 End of Day Report

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