I was pretty sure all the equipment I had already would be perfect for my first exploration mission. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to be even more ready. If I was going to be trekking around in a swamp then there were some things I would want. Boots that were made for hiking and one of those anti-bug rune things that Milread had used were both at the top of my list.

My first step was to walk back down to Central. The street was lined with shops that sold all sorts of things. Now that I was looking there were lots of small logos on walls and next to shop signs that matched the pins worn by the employees within.

I supposed that the guilds served as a sort of union. I hoped that they had something to say about quality as I entered a store with a large shoe-shaped sign at the front. It was filled with boots and shoes of all sorts and, probably because of the before-noon hours, completely empty of clients.

The only person in the shop was a nice grenoil girl who helped me find a pair of hiking boots. She kept looking at my shoes with something akin to wonder though; I guess sneakers weren’t all that common. My new boots didn’t fit perfectly and they didn’t have the grippy rubber soles that I expected from boots, but they did look nice, with carefully tooled leather that had been polished to a shine.

I left with a box tucked under one arm and two silver less in my pocket.

Next was a stop in a general store half a dozen times bigger than the one in Rockstack and with hundreds of strange items within. It took a lot of focus to just pick out some foodstuffs and a magic bug-repelling amulet, which were apparently quite common.

Then, arms full of stuff that I would need to repack later, I headed back to the Rock Inn and Roll Inn.

“Ah, Broccoli,” Julien said as I walked in. “How did your adventure go? See any pretty ships?”

“I’m a temporary member of the Exploration Guild now!” I said as I moved over to the bar. “And no, I didn’t get to see the ships yet. I’m going to go drop this stuff off, alright?”

“Go ahead, go ahead.”

I returned to the dinning room to find Julien sitting at one of the tables with two hot meals before him. One at the seat he was perched on and the other before an empty chair. He gestured to the chair as soon as he saw me.

“So, tell zis old gossip how it went,” he demanded.

I grinned as I sniffed at the meal. “It went well, I think. I met a Mister Rainnewt and I joined as a temporary member for now. I’ll see about joining in full in a little bit.”

“Good on you, girl,” Julien said. “Now you’ll begin your training I suppose?”

“Nope. I’m heading out tomorrow on my first expedition.”

“Truly? Zings have changed zen.”

“I think it’s an exception being made. I did come in with a recommendation.” I blew across a spoonful of some sort of potato-ish soup before munching down on it. Just like all the food I'd had in Julien and Juliette's Inns, it was heavenly. “I bought a few things for the trip tomorrow. We’re travelling by airship!”

“Oh? Do you know where to?” he asked.

“Somewhere swampy,” I said.

“Zat narrows it down to anywhere in Deepmarsh!” he said with a laugh. “You’ll want to pack a few good books for ze trip. Else you’ll be bored.”

“On an airship?” I asked.

He nodded. “Oh yes. It’s quite exciting for the first few hours, zen you get used to it. It’s like anyzing else, really.”

“Well, I guess,” I said. I didn’t believe him, but I wasn’t going to tell him to his face. Then again, I did have a bit of silver to spend still, and a couple of books wouldn’t hurt. I had read most of my herbology book cover to cover, even if some parts I’d just skimmed. “Do you know any bookstores in the area?”

“Zere’s one along Central zat has a good reputation, but it is quite expensive. And zere’s one two streets down zat is owned by a bun. She is quite nice. Less books, but better price.”

A bun? Like a Cinnamon Bun? “Can you give me directions?” I asked before noticing that my bowl was empty. I pouted at it while Julien laughed. He picked up the dishes as he got up and rattled off a few simple instructions. Most of them were about turning left at a red building and past a barber shop instead of just street names, but I didn’t mind.

Tummy full, and a way to waste the rest of the day away at hand, I walked back out onto the main streets of Port Royal.

I couldn’t get enough of just walking around the port city. There were so many strange people out and about. From grenoil aristocrats to people that looked like adventurers. I crossed before a group of five armoured people that I suspected were human, but couldn’t tell because of the thick black plate armour they were wearing, and at one point I almost bumped into a floating crystal that apologised to me in a chiming voice for blocking my path.

The farther I got from Central the quieter the streets became. There were still horses and toads moving about and people walking to and fro, but the number of shops decreased. Instead the area was filled with big homes.

And then I found the bookstore, a narrow-but-tall building tucked between a butcher’s shop and a normal home. There was a sign hanging off the front of an opened book with a big pair of bunny ears sticking out of it.

A bell jingled when I pressed into the shop, and the same anti-stink enchantments must have been active because instead of smelling like sulphur and horse-poop, the interior smelled like books and fresh paper. There might have been something to dampen the sound too, because the constant hiss of steam through pipes was lessened into only a faint murmur in the distance.

“Just one moment, I’ll be right with you,” someone called from deeper in the store.

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“Take your time,” I called back. Books, I knew, were a lot more expensive here than they were back on Earth. Probably because producing paper and bindings was complicated and fewer people were literate. A richer clientele and more complexity in making a product meant it was more expensive.

The store had a few rows of shelves, some filled with scrolls, others with leather-bound books. There were display cases with glass fronts filling most of the front of the store, a few books on plush cushions with little placards with their titles next to them.

I walked around, inspecting the names of the books one by one with a growing smile. A Rose Among Marshy Thorns looked like a harlequin romance while Silverto’s Compendium of the Arcane looked like a fascinating book about magic. The titles said a lot about the books, which helped since other than some occasional gilding on the edges, the books didn’t have covers with pictures on them.

“Hello there. Ah, a human.”

I turned and took in the woman that I assumed owned the store. She was young-ish, maybe still in her twenties, with a nice dress and, most attention grabbing of all, a big pair of floppy black bunny ears atop her head. She didn’t even have normal ears that I could see.

“Whoa,” I said before I remembered that I had to be polite to everybody if I expected the same in return. “Ah, hi, sorry, I never met someone with such pretty ears before. I’m Broccoli!”

The girl grinned. “Hello Broccoli. I’m Booksie. Or, well, that’s what my friends call me.”

Were we friends already? I was really starting to like this shop. “My friends call me Broc sometimes,” I said. “But Broccoli is okay too. After all, broccoli is good for you.”

Booksie giggled at that. “Well then, Broccoli, how can I help you today? Are you looking for something in particular?” She looked down at my chest. “Or are you here for something to help you with an exploration mission?”

“Oh,” I said as I touched my pin. “No, just something to pass the time. I have an airship trip tomorrow; I need reading material. Do you have anything on magic? For people who are really bad at it?”

“I might have a thing or two,” Booksie said.

“Oh, and apparently my mana is cleaning-type. So any neat spells that would be easy to cast would be really neat too.”

“Hmm,” Booksie said as she tapped her chin. “Wait right here!”

I continued looking at all the books for the two or three minutes it took for Booksie to bounce around. She returned with two books and a pile of scrolls that she placed on a table that was free of any books.

“Alright! I forgot to ask you about your budget.” She tapped a knuckle to the side of her head and stuck her tongue out. “Sorry! But I picked some books that aren’t too expensive. This is A Guide to Manipulating the Essence, it’s a primer from the Deepmarsh magic academy. Simple, used to teach younger students. Thirty silver. It won’t have anything too advanced in it, but it should come with explanations. The diagrams are simple to follow and there are sections with practice exercises to help you refine your control.”

“Oh, neat,” I said as I picked up the book and leafed through it. There were lots of illustrations and the language used seemed almost... condescending, but maybe that was for the best.

“This is Larson’s translation of a Pyrowalkian combat instruction manual. It’s quite popular. One lesser gold.”

I took the next book more carefully and opened it up. The text was split down the middle with the same words written above and below but in different handwritings. “Why does it just say the same thing twice?” I asked.

Booksie blinked at me. “Because it’s a translation. The top is in the language spoken in Pyrowalk, the bottom is in Deepmarsh. They share a linguistic root, so some words are similar. Can you... read either?”

“I can read both,” I said. How could I read both? Was it some sort of cool translation power given by my class? Or maybe because I was from another world? That would be super neat! The only problem was that I couldn’t see the translation at work. Which begged the question, which language was I speaking now?

“Oh!” Booksie said. “Well then, maybe wait for an original copy of the manual then. I hear that it has wonderful illustrations.”

“It is a bit much for a translation,” I said. I couldn’t afford to spend too much on books, not when I would probably be coming back in a few days with even more money. “What about the scrolls?” I asked as I gave her back the one book and moved the other closer to my end of the table. I was certainly going to read it.

“I brought a bunch. Unfortunately, there are many, many cleaning spells, but they’re rarely written in scrolls. Too... common, I’m afraid. But cleaning mana is close to holy, light and water, so I have a few staples of those aspects. This is Holy Light, which irritates the undead and can dissipate a ghost. Good for lighting up dark rooms too. Lightball, which creates a ball of light that moves with the caster. And this is Draw Water. It’s made to draw water from the ground, but it’s a staple spell of water mages everywhere. Learning it should help you learn more water-aspect spells later.”

“How much for all of them?” I asked.

Booksie looked a little flustered for a moment. “Ah, well, um, two sil each?”

“I’ll take all three and A Guide to Manipulating the Essence,” I said.

“Oh, wow, okay. Yes, let me just get you a bag!”

As Booksie ran around and looked for a bag and then counted out the silvers I gave her, I looked at all the books around me and promised myself that I would be back. I had a lot of catching up to do, after all!