BrightMoon: Path of a Witch King

Chapter 17

“Even if what you say is true, I would still need to have them tested to verify it, so I won't be able to more than a gold disk until they have been verified.” The young woman said flatly.

I shrugged before scooping up my items and placing them into my bag, “Well I will consider your generous offer while I am still in town, but for now I still have other business at the union.” I got up and left the trading post.

It wasn't too strange that they didn't believe me, it wasn't as if I had a long standing relationship with their company or the town. My most solid connection was the hunters union, though I was a low ranking member I was still in the organization.

I made my way down from the trading post and into the Union's main building. It wasn't crowded when I entered but the room felt tense, even the entertainment was less jovial than I was expecting.

I walked over to one of the young women behind the reception counter, “Excuse me but I have a few magic items I need to get appraised.” I pulled my tag out from below my shirt and placed it along with a bag filled with goblin emblems on the counter.

The young woman quickly noted down the name on the tag and emptied the bag of goblin emblems onto the desk, “Of course, let me just tally these up real quick before I go and speak with my manager about setting up an appraisal.”

She tallied up the total and passed me my coin before excusing herself, a few minutes passed as me and my apprentices waited. A tall blond woman came from the back, the young woman stood behind her, the manager was a bit taller than I was. Her long blond hair was mostly pulled back showing off her thin pointed ears, she was easily a ten back on earth but with the elf factor she would've been a goddess worshiped by millions back home. 

“Hello, Mr. BrightMoon. My name is Ashala, Jillian told me that you are requesting an appraisal of magical items.” She welcomed me much more warmly than the merchants had.

“It is a pleasure to meet you and please call me BrightMoon. An appraisal isn't quite accurate, I know what the magical items do already, I am just looking for someone to sell them to.” I explained.

“How do you know what the items do?” she asked rather quickly, but it didn't matter much to me.

“Well I made them, and I have a way to appraise them myself, if you have a spare bit of paper and something to write with.” Jillian handed me a pen and paper even as I mentioned it. 

I thanked the receptionist and wrote down what my items did, with a minor description of what they looked like before passing it to Ashala. Her eyebrows shot up, “You made these and you can appraise magical items?” her voice raising an octave.

Before I could answer her, Ashala came around the counter and started to lead me off to a staircase, “Well lets go ahead and discuss this further in my office, it is much more comfortable in there, is there anything we can get you? Tea, coffee, maybe an ale?”

Considering that I was being treated like a VIP instead of a new member of the Union I didn't mind milking it for now, “If you have any cider, chilled or hot, I would love some.” She smiled and nodded at my request, she sent Jillian to go prepare the refreshments while taking us to her office on the second floor.

She wasn't wrong, her office was much more comfortable, we were sitting in the middle of the office on a pair of comfortable couches. A coffee table sat between us, on the coffee table was my list of my enchanted items, yet Ashala seemed to be more interested in me than my items.

“So what do you think?” I asked the manager to see if I could move this along.

“The Items are impressive, I can offer twenty gold disks per ring and thirty for the necklace, but the reason I brought you up here was so I could recruit you.'' She gave me what seemed like a fair price, though I wouldn't know if that was true until I could investigate further.

Jillean entered the room and started placing the table with small snacks and our drinks in front of us. She stood off to Ashalas’ side waiting for further instruction.

“What do you mean to recruit me?” I said before grabbing a steaming cup in front of me. I gave it a sniff, the smell of apple cider with cinnamon made my mouth water.

“Your ability to examine magic items, it is a very rare gift, and with how detailed your ability is we wouldn't have to risk testing an object pulled out of some dungeon, crypt, or wherever they get them from. I lost five good men this year due to magic items effects not being identifiable and several more injured and unable to work.” the manager complained to me.

I hummed at the proposal. I didn't have an issue with working for the union, to be honest I wasn't sure if I wanted to be an adventurer diving into battle for silver everyday.

Not that I didn't love using my spells, because honestly I was getting itchy hands wanting to try and develop myself further and wreak havoc on the goblins, I just didn't want to be reliant on that as my source of income.

I could feel a certain part of me crave the violence. I took another sip, letting the drink warm me all the way to my bones.

“What would the job require of me exactly?” I was curious to know what I would be doing, that along with payment. 

“Well to be honest it would just be identifying magical objects when they come, as far as determining their value I am sure you could learn quickly enough on how the market works and how to determine a good price. The compensation is going to be three gold cubes a month.” she stated her offer.

In my opinion it was a great livable wage, I would be obscenely wealthy if I lived in town, but that made me rethink the offer. I liked my home, it was serene and had all the comforts I needed, along with plenty of space and privacy.

I sat back and sipped my drink. “How often would I need to be here?” I asked. Maybe there was a way for me to still live at home.

“I would need to have you either here or in town where I can have someone find you if an item comes across the desk. Adventurers and hunters come down the mountain river quite often and the Union and the M&F are the only ones able to determine the value of items of a magical nature.”

My hopes were crushed, I stood up and paced a bit, if only there was a way to be at home and identify objects. My eyes wandered to a stack of paper on the desk, I moved to it and an idea came to mind. “Give me just a moment, I might need to borrow some paper.” 

I ignored whatever Ashala might have said back and pulled out my grimoire, I grabbed a few sheets of paper and looked at my magical book. ‘Is it possible to enchant this paper to perform the same analysys you did or perhaps some glasses?’

My thoughts went to the grimoire which responded quickly.

{It may be possible. By using me as a focus I can direct the enchantment to your desired effect.}

We had a brief conversation about what the enchantment should show; it came down to the use of the object, if it was cursed, the creator, and condition of the item.

I placed the stack of paper onto the grimoire, the stack of paper sank into the book like an elephant in quicksand. Without an object to focus on I closed my eyes and began pushing my mana into the grimoire, I hadn't pushed much into it before the stack of pages came back out.

On the front of the page was an area to place the trinkets. It was a symbol I had seen during my studies into enchantments, it looked alot like the symbols from that alchemist anime except that the runes on the edges and points were not random but concise directions for the magic to work properly.

I brought the stack of paper over to the coffee table, I placed a ring on a single piece of paper and watched the paper light up for a moment. Now on the top of the paper the sections had filled out with all the relevant information about the ring. The writing was burned into the page, making it a one time use item, I pushed it and the ring over to Ashala.

“How about I work from home, and once a month I drop off a stack of these Identifiers?” I proposed and grabbed one of the tiny sweets from a silver tray.

Ashala seemed to be at a loss for words, she picked up the paper and held it carefully. She looked up with a fire in her eyes that looked a bit manic, “No problem. Lets go ahead and get this into writing, Jillian can you prepare everything.” Jillean smiled and left the room.

“BrightMoon, what about magical weapons, will it work on something bigger than the page?” Ashala pointed out.

“I don't know.” I said, sitting up straight. I hadn't thought about magical weapons at all. “Do you have something we can test it on?” 

Ashala nodded. “We have quite a few weapons in stock, we even have a backlog of trinkets that need to be tested so these Identifiers are going to be incredibly useful. Especially since they can be used by the receptionists, Hah! Foruk is going to be pissed that he took the day off today.”

“Why would this Faruk person be upset?” I asked.

“Hah because I am the one bringing you in means I will get a bonus, not to mention my career as a manager will take off. I am relatively new to this office, but if I want to get promoted then I need to either work here a long time or perform well enough to get the attention of the higher ups.” Ashala explained between sips of her own drink.

So that explained her excitement, Jillian didn't take long to come back with some forms, Ashala sent her to go grab a few weapons from their stock. I looked over the forms with Ashala and hammering out the details, when Jillian returned with the weapons I tried my identifiers on all of them.

Ashala had been right, anything that didn't fit on the page couldnt be identified by it, but she had come up with a solution. She had a few blank scrolls, which her ever faithful assistant gathered for us. I went through the same process as the sheets of paper, once it was complete I tested out the scroll on four weapons.

We tried a set of throwing knives along with a wand, sword, and staff. It worked perfectly, Ashala was excited enough to start squirming in her seat.

We amended the contract to include a set amount of scrolls and pages, I accepted the salary of four gold cubes, I was only using mana and it would take me ten minutes at most to create my quota.

As I was signing my name a large blue skinned man barged into the meeting room, “Ashala where is the enchantress? I can't believe you would try and sign someone up under your name on my day to oversee the outpost!” I was not too worried by the man and finished signing my name. 

I let Ashala handle the big guy and I turned to Jillian, “Jillian would you be kind enough to have a few barrels of that cider loaded into a cart for me.”

She smiled and gave an adorable curtsey, “Of course BrightMoon, is there anything else you need while you are here?”

“Actually there is, do we have a tailor on staff or maybe someone the Union works with? I am in need of some clothes for me and my apprentices and I have yet to start my search for one.” I asked before biting into a cookie, it was actually like the wafers back on earth and tasted like vanilla and honey.

“We actually have a tailor who we recommend to our hunters, let me go see if they are in the building while I set up your order for that cider.” She left quickly and closed the door behind her.

“Ouch!” 

I turned to see the blue skinned fellow with his hands on Sateras’ shoulder, and by the grimace on her face he was still hurting her. I got up and quickly strode towards the man.

“Come now little enchantress and sign the contract with me instead of this-”

Before he could finish his sentence I had pulled out one of my clubs, it swung through the air and struck him on the elbow of his extended arm. 

The following scream seemed to shake the whole building.