Eric and the gals (Kendra and Tilly) were hanging out with Captain King and his new CO, Major Young, talking about the Korea situation. The Major was complaining, “We don't really have the troops right now, we are guarding all the rifts we find with national guard, but there have been several cases like the skeleton rift where we have had to get the regular army in. If we send too many to Korea, we won't have enough to guard at home.”
Captain King said “Could be worse, could be Canada.” The northern nation had nearly as many rifts as the US, despite their much lower population. The flip side was a lot more Canadians had classes than Americans. Most people didn't like going through a military checkpoint even when the military did let people through, and most of the American gates were closed 'for your protection' by some military officer who didn't like the idea of people with classes.
To everyone's surprise, Young said “At least the Canadians could fight off the North Koreans. In a real fight I wouldn't expect first or third platoon to stand up to much. Second could beat the other two even with the current state of the unit.”
King cautiously inquired, “Do you want me to encourage more troops to enter the rift?”
Young sighed, “For now we have no direction pro or con. I can't ask you to officially encourage it. But if we can do anything unofficial...”
King smiled, “Jonah, I think I should start visiting the Orc rift on a regular basis, maybe once a week. I'd like to take one of the big trucks though, for, um, morale reasons.”
Major Young smiled, “Let me guess, if some troops want to take monster corpses to sell to the orcs, you will turn a blind eye?”
“I can't imagine what you are talking about, what monster corpses?” King laughed.
“Lashawn?” Eric asked Captain King, “I'd like to go on these trips.”
“Why?” King asked.
“I have a merchant skill, I don't know if any of your troops do. I can get some skill experience and they can get better prices.”
“OK, but you get only ten percent, and it will be voluntary only.”
Eric laughed, “I'm doing it for the experience, I wasn't planning on taking anything from your men. But maybe if they want to buy me a beer sometime I'd accept that.”
“I'll tell Guidry.”
The Cajun quickly spread the word, nothing official of course, but a lot of troops were suddenly 'sightseeing' the other side of the rift when off duty. The medics were treating a lot of burns and bite wounds from troops having 'accidents' while 'sightseeing.' The officers were completely unaware of what was happening, even the ones who had been going 'sightseeing' themselves.
The end of that week Eric met Guidry at the truck. Captain King was taking a squad of first platoon with him, by chance all of them had classes and full inventory. Eric told the troops, “No one has to sell through me, but I'll talk to the Orcs first, and see what price I can get. If you want to take the price I get you, do, otherwise...negotiate for yourself.”
Guidry looked at the other sergeant in the truck, “Anybody else got da merchant skill? No? Maybe you let de expert take dis one?”
“Sarge, lets not pressure them,” Eric hurriedly interrupted.
The other sergeant nodded, “Yeah, let the men choose for themselves. I'm guessing he will get us the best deal, but letting someone get less might be a good learning experience.”
“Guys!” Eric chided them. The troops started to laugh at the earnest civvie.
At the rift King went to talk to the XO of the local Company, while the troops put on their packs and went through. Eric saw Frob, the orc merchant who had bought logs from him before. The orc was now wearing rich robes, and stood at a large tent filled with logs and wooden goods.
Frob was talking to a human, “You assure me these are all handmade goods?” The orc asked.
“Yes, of course, these are antiques, from before we had factories.”
“Will you agree to buy back any that can't be enchanted at the same price?”
The human hesitated, “Well, you have to understand, there are transportation costs.”
The orc frowned, “Do you understand why I'm asking for hand made?”
Eric walked over, “Frob, is there something I can help you with?” Both merchants frowned, “I'm an enchanter, I can tell you if any of these can't be enchanted right now, then neither of you have to worry about it.”
The human merchant flinched, “You know, I think that the roll-top desk might be manufactured.” Eric moved towards the furniture, “And the oak dining table too.” He admitted.
Grob growled “I need trading partners I can trust, I will pay the agreed prices for the other furniture, I can't use the manufactured junk.”
The other merchant glared at Eric, “You should have kept your big mouth shut, do you know how much you cost me?” He moved towards Eric, and began to lift his arm-then quickly lowered it. Eric looked around, the soldiers had moved up behind him, and every orc in the area had put hands on weapons. The other human merchants were all glaring at the man.
The man stalked back to Grob, “Fine,” he put out his hand, and the orc counted out 5 gold coins and 3 silver. As the man's crew loaded the two manufactured items back on his truck he kept glaring at Eric.
As the drama went away, Eric asked Grob, “Do you know someone who will buy monster corpses?”
“What kind?” Grob asked.
“Mostly Salamanders, but we have two Wyverns and 12 Plobirds.”
Grob walked Eric over to another orc, “Kam, this is Eric, orc-friend and honest dealer. Eric, Kam is trustworthy and deals in monster parts and other enchanting crap.”
“Crap? At least I'm not buying and selling dead trees.” Kam responded, then clasped Grob's forearm. Both orcs laughed, and Eric realized they were just teasing each other.
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Eric went over the monster bodies the troops had acquired, and negotiated prices-it took almost an hour as the merchant nit-picked damage from bullets, claimed salamanders were 'small' and used other tactics to lower prices. In the end Eric still got what he was sure was an ok price, though he didn't manage to increase his merchant skill. After unloading backpacks and pulling bodies from their inventories, the troops all left with a few gold coins-seeming minor until realizing that an orcish gold coin was worth $2083.18 on the current market.
Eric noticed something like a pen on Kam's desk, “What is that?”
“An inscribing tool, you said you were an enchanter earlier, right? With this your inscriptions will always be the same depth whether you are using it on soft wood or hard metal.”
“How much?” Eric asked.
Kam put a hand to his chin, “2 gold, but only because you are an orc friend.”
Eric frowned, “I don't have that much.” While he had gotten paid for animals himself earlier in town, he had sold most of it for US cash. He had one gold and one silver he had kept as souvenirs, and put them on the table, “Would this be enough?”
Kam snorted, “Look, good tactic, but I really can't just begger myself for you. If you had seven silver and that gold, sure, I'd take it.”
Eric reached for his money, only for one of the soldiers to cover his hand. “Eric, you helped us out, and didn't ask for anything. I think we can spare a silver each.” The troops reached into pockets and passed them over, leading to Eric having enough.
“Thanks guys,” Eric had to turn his head a bit to not show his embarrassment. Kam took the money and handed over the tool.
Eric headed home from the Orc rift, letting King take the troops back without him. Once home he glanced at his phone and saw a news article on the fall of Seoul. The only good news was that while the North had taken over two dungeons, they seemed to have become bogged down in the capital city. The population were not happy with being occupied.
Then he saw a speech by the president. “My fellow Americans, I am afraid we are seeing a change in the way wars are fought. Technology alone is no longer enough. I know many have brought up very good issues with widespread rift exploration, but we cannot fall behind our rivals and foes on the world stage. South Korea is our ally, and American men and women are dying there right now. I am proposing a bill to congress that will direct military and law enforcement personnel to get classes, and in keeping with the spirit of the 2nd Amendment, any American who is not a felon will be given access to our rifts.”
The next day the text of the proposed law was released. It was clearly written with the needs of some special interest groups, for instance health insurance companies and certain health companies were a major driver of advertisements and social media campaigns against the rifts, but the proposed law would restrict the use of healing magic to only combat and combat related injuries. Thus protecting companies from the effects of skill curing diabetes killing insulin sales. Sure, the rich could go to Europe to get such a skill used on them, but most Americans wouldn't be able to afford it. Eric felt a bit sick at some of the carve-outs of what he was allowed to do with his skills, his volunteer work at the homeless shelter, curing minor stuff, would soon be illegal.
Then again, someone would have to turn him in, and then some prosecutor would have to decide “jailing someone for giving medical care to the homeless” was something they wanted on their resume. Maybe he would pretend not to know about that part of the law and keep going.
He saw he had a call from Agent Parks, “Hey Kendra, what's up?”
“Hey, so, I have a new partner, and he is a rift rookie, with the new directive, everyone needs to go into the rift-well, not everyone, folks with a religious or moral objection can skip it, but after what happened, well no one in our office is taking that escape clause. Anyway, I was thinking I'd take folks into the rift four at a time and let them do a quest, maybe see if they can reach level 2?”
“That sounds like a good idea,” Eric agreed. “I'm guessing you are calling me to be your backup?”
“Sorta, you have that escape skill right? Sometimes people do something stupid. Being able to bug out would make me feel a bit safer.”
“Did you have a rift in mind?” Eric had a suggestion if she didn't.
“I really liked that dinochicken you cooked us.” Kendra teased.
“It was Coltroraptor, but I agree. You know, I did the quest to get their eggs, even got the XP, but never did anything with the eggs, didn't even sell em. I was wondering if we could domesticate them.”
Kendra just laughed. “I'm taking Tilly as well, so seven total, your skill can cover that right?”
“No more than seven, but yeah.”
Three hours later Eric met the Agents and Tilly at the rift. “Have any of you tasted Coltroraptor?” Eric asked, knowing that most hadn't. He saw the heads shake. “Well, hopefully we kill a few and I can cook them up for you.”
Kendra interrupted, “OK, everyone, I know some of you are senior to me, but range rules apply, I'm your range master, and what I say goes, because it will keep you alive. Eric and Tilly, treat them the same. We are going to encounter animals that will do their best to kill us. We will probably be in a deadly fight, maybe more than one. Tilly can probably take out a threat if needed, my defender ability means I can hopefully stop you from getting hurt. If I fail, Eric can heal, and can also yank us all out of danger and back here. Any questions?”
“Are you saying the orc is tougher than you?” One agent asked.
“Miller, you're an asshole. Yes, Tilly would kick my ass.” Kendra answered him. “The other thing I wanted to mention, you will be given options for your class, and you don't have to take what is suggested. Investigator is a good class if you want to do law enforcement, as is law-keeper. With that said, we are probably going to be interacting with criminals who have classes in the future, so if you pick a combat class, well as a defender I don't have much room to talk do I?” There was some polite chuckles at her lame joke. “If we don't have anything else, lets go.”
Once everyone was through the rift, Kendra stopped to let everyone pick classes. Two Investigators, a Warrior, and the other woman in the group, with Swedish features and blonde hair, picked Ice Mage. She explained “It says my magic can restrain people, which will be useful for capturing suspects without killing them. I have long ranged handcuffs.”
One of the male agents made a bawdy joke about letting her handcuff him, and Kendra sharply corrected him, “None of that on my watch.”
The new agents had gotten the coltroraptor quest, and Eric of course could lead them right to a group of the birdlike monsters. Both groups were taller than the grass and scanning their surroundings, so saw each other at about the same time. Kendra had the agents in a rough line, two on each side of her, with Eric and Tilly at the ends of the line. As the five creatures charged, Kendra said “Fire,” and pistol fire cracked. The twelve bullets from the Agents new to the rift had poor results, not only did several shots miss the bobbing heads of the birds, but what did hit wasn't enough to take any of them down. Kendra used her crystal beamer, holding the laser like blast on the head of the lead Coltrorapter until is dropped.
The tall birdlike monsters, covered in red feathers with colorful accents, charged through the tall grass, but it would take a bit to reach the agents. This gave them time to keep firing. A bird went down, then another, before they reached the group and leapt towards two of the agents. One of them dropped his gun and tried to flee, but the other was the Ice Mage, who put her other hand out and called “Ice Trap.”
Both birds slammed into Kendra's defensive shield and fell down in front of what turned into a firing squad. Kendra used her beam weapon on the one that wasn't frozen in ice, and the other agents ended the last bird in a hail of lead.
“I'm not sure that one will be worth eating,” Eric joked, as he trotted forward to grab the first bird Kendra took down. They decided to sell the bird that had 7 bullets in its torso, but Eric promised to barbecue the first one they killed, and let the agents decide what to do with the other three edible birds once they had tasted the meat. “You can still sell the feathers, feet, heads, and other parts of these birds if you eat them, the meat is actually not worth much to enchanters and such.” Eric had learned why monster parts were worth gold, it could reduce the strain of enchanting if you used them either in making the item or enchanting it. Given the value of magical items, monster corpses were a major part of the orcish economy, and Eric expected them to be a similar part of Earth's economy soon.
Eric used his escape skill to save the walk back, and they all drove to Eric's house for a cookout, Eric even provided some beers, though Kendra suggested only one beer each.
Then Eric got a text from Captain King.
“Eric, we need anyone we can get, and probably you especially. The skeleton rift has fallen, 3rd brigade Charlie company was wiped out. If there is anyone else you can bring who can help, please ask them to come.”