Port Master Rook was not particularly thrilled by the downfall of the Demon King.

Not that he showed it, of course. The refined man, once young-looking but now creased by the necessities of leadership to an appearance more fitting his middling age, made certain to exult and applaud and say all of the lines that were expected of him. To do otherwise would be to invite the Things that sometimes came to him in his dreams, hissing at him about ‘complaint tickets’ and ‘main story support’ and ‘doing his fucking job’. But no matter how dutifully he cheered and fussed over the steady trickle of severed head-toting Players, he couldn’t force himself to feel it in his heart.

The repetition didn’t help, certainly. Maybe if he’d had any confidence that the Demon King actually was dead, permanently, he’d have felt a tickle of something. But that was increasingly difficult after months and months of the same preening Players presenting identical grisly trophies. Either the Demon King kept coming back, or he had like a million heads.

Port Master Rook didn't find either possibility all that appealing.

The fact that the Demon King didn’t seem to be doing anything further complicated matters. As far as Rook could tell, he spent all of his days sitting around in The Lands of Inchoate Horror loudly announcing that he was just about to launch some new Infernal Crusade, that he was just about to bring about the End of All Things. But if the forces of evil were actually accomplishing anything, it took the form of a far subtler calamity.

Somehow, Port Master Rook doubted they were capable of such illusive maneuverings. They’d named their home ‘The Lands of Inchoate Horror’, after all. Not exactly the mark of a delicate touch.

Fortunately, at this point, most of the Players who breezed through Anyport still-dripping in Demon King blood seemed to be just as bored by the matter as Rook was. Few of them bothered even presenting him with the head in question anymore, and fewer still asked for the Hero’s Banquet he was meant to host for them. Most simply changed ships and sailed for Magica City. Rarely did they bother to wash off the blood.

Rook had hoped the pattern would hold, but this dwarf girl seemed to be one of the vanishingly few true believers. She either truly believed that she had saved all of Magica, or she was simply that eager to be praised. Either way, there was no getting out of it: Port Master Rook had a job to do. That meant pulling a Key to the City out of the big shed stuffed with Keys to the City. That meant brushing up on his adulating speeches. That meant rounding up people for the banquet.

Oh Gods, another banquet.

He allowed himself a brief sigh, a bit of momentary glumness bubbling through his professional facade. He was just a man, after all, and all of this forced celebration of pointless decapitation had taken its toll. It wasn’t as if he was one of those drones in Magica City, who simply existed to unhinge their jaws and let whatever some Higher Being had written for them to spill out at the right moment. He had dreams! He had needs! He dearly wanted to go just one day without getting the Demon King’s blood on his very nice boots.

But no. Port Master Rook had his role to play, and he knew he didn’t have the stones to rebel against it beyond a few private grumbles. Any more than that was a surefire way to invite the Things to fill his unwaking hours with more of their hellish training videos.

Ugh. He was already dreading the speech he’d have to give. He quickly shoved that unhappy thought to the back of his mind and turned his attention to other matters. Namely, the odd group that had arrived just after this latest batch of Players. No ship manifest claimed them, which meant they had most likely Teleported. But from where? They lacked the vaguely unnerving mannerisms of Magica City citizens, and they were far too low level to have come from any of the usual ports of call.

Curious. Very curious.

The elf was immediately tabled as an outlier; maybe she was an ally or an associate or simply a fellow traveler, but any theory Rook might have had as to why she was with these not-quite-Beastmen dog people would have been little better than a guess. As to the other four, he thought he saw the broad strokes. The smaller woman was clearly someone important; a high cleric or scholar or some other leader. And the steel-eyed giant and exuberant little scribe were clearly her bodyguard and aide, respectively.

The other male was Rook’s sticking point, however. Why had this woman brought along a personal bard, of all things?

Well, no matter. Maybe Rook could convince her to let him sing a few songs at tonight’s banquet. Then maybe the next time the Things showed up in his dreams, they’d shriek that he’d done a good job for once. A man could always hope. Either way the group seemed to have finished their post-Teleportation vomiting, so Rook figured the time was as good as any for introductions.

“Greetings!” Rook opened in his deeply practiced official voice. “And welcome to Anyport! I am Port Master Meriwether Rook. What brings you to this humble harbor, if I might ask?”

The leader tilted her head at Rook, quite charmingly if he did say so himself. What were these people, exactly? He desperately wanted to know, but it seemed like a deeply rude question. And if their reaction to his opening inquiry was any indication, this conversation wouldn’t last long enough for him to get to that particular query.

For whatever reason four of the five seemed to be deeply amused at the simple question posed to their leader, the bard flicking his canine ears in some inscrutable expression as the others shot him sidelong glances. Oh wait, did they not speak Common? Was the elf their translator, maybe? Rook had very nearly tried again in his shaky Elven when the smaller woman opened her mouth and replied. “We’re answering a summons from King Majesty.”

Ah! Well. That tied everything up nicely, actually. The Court of Magica had dealings all across the breadth of the world, so it was no surprise they’d have contact with peoples Rook had not yet personally met. That also covered how a group of such middling level got their hands on a Teleportation scroll. And clearly the bard was intended to present King Majesty with a gift of song; that was a rather canny move, Rook had to give them–

Wait. Did that make sense?

Rook furrowed his brow. No, it didn’t. Teleportation scrolls were designed to connect to the closest waypoint, and there were very few populated regions of Magica that were closer to Anyport than some other waypoint. The Lands of Inchoate Horror was one, Bon Vivant was another, and then there was Fort Unfallen. All three very high level, all three completely inhospitable to people in their mid-twenties such as these. That just left…where did that leave? “Pardon me, but where are you from?”

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The leader folded her hands into her sleeves. “Shinki Itten.”

Shinki where? “I’ve never…” Rook slipped his hand under the back of his hat, distractedly rubbing at the little bald spot that had begun to form at the back of his head. “I’m not familiar with Shinki Itten? Is that one of the Freebooter Islands, or…?”

“Oh, let me show you!” The scribe began to fumble with his notes. “Do you have a map handy?”

Rook called out to a crew loitering by their unloaded ship, and a few moments later he and the five strangers were huddled around a map of the Eastern Sea unfurled over a large crate. “So that is Magica City,” the scribe pointed quite unnecessarily to the city at the western terminus of the waters Rook called home, “and this is us here in Anyport,” he dropped his finger, again quite excessively, towards the port of call near the middle of the sea. “Right?”

“Right…” Rook squinted down at the map, his eyes scanning it for where he might have missed an entire city. “But where is Shinki Itten?”

The scribe shifted his finger from Anyport towards the south, indicating the blank space in existence where the Eastern Sea simply ended. “In this direction, a bit past where the map ends. You’re going to need more maps, I’m afraid.”

Rook shook his head. “There’s nothing to the south. Literally nothing; the ocean just hits a blank spot. I’ve seen it.”

For whatever reason, the bard took that as his cue to join in. “Saw it, maybe. But it’s not blank anymore. We’ve filled in the edges of the world.”

The Port Master stared at the bard for a moment, thoughtfully clicking his tongue. Then, he raised his voice once again to the nearby group of sailors. “Hey! Is your lots’ Navigator awake?” A few minutes of clamor later and a knobbly-looking old man with an impressively tangled beard wobbled his way onto the docks, the annoyance on his face evaporating when Rook flipped him a gold coin. “Do a quick route for me. Three closest cities, by sea.”

The Navigator paused long enough to give the coin a hard chomp, slipping it into the pouch around his neck when it seemingly met muster. Then he rolled back his head, his eyes filming over with milky whiteness as he intoned in his creaky voice. “One Day, Western Searoad, Magica City. Two Days, Southern Searoad, Shinki Itten. Four Days, Eastern–”

“That’s enough; that’ll do.” Rook waved away the already departing navigator, his mind ablaze with this new information. A new route to the South? With a new city directly connected to Anyport by that route? Dare he hope? “Shinki Itten. Hm.” The Port Master attempted to keep his tone measured as he spoke aloud, his eyes still locked on the now-outdated map. “I don’t suppose you grow much fruit in Shinki Itten?”

“Fruit?” The leader shared a glance with the scribe, then shrugged. “Yes? Ploms, cherries. Oranges. Yuzu. I think there’s some–”

Rook’s mind was buzzing too loudly to hear anything more. Oranges. Jackpot. The Port Master was already fumbling a sheet of forms from his stack of papers, no longer caring if he was coming across as too desperate. “Would you be interested at all in signing a trade agreement with Anyport?!”

The group was clearly taken aback by Rook’s sudden fervor, so much so that the bard inserted himself into the business dealings. “Well, anything detailed would need a full vote of the council, but we could probably authorize an informal agreement with just the three–”

“Alright perfect informal’s great here~!” The Port Master shoved the document into the hands of the woman in charge, immediately presenting them with a pen. He did his best not to wriggle with impatience as the woman conferred with her bodyguard and bard, the three of them quietly murmuring to one another as they scanned the proffered form. Then the huge guard plucked the pen from Rook’s fingers, the man’s anxious hopes boiling inside him as one by one, the three dog people signed the agreement.

>City-Wide Alert: A New Trade Quest Has Been Created in Anyport<

Rook could barely stand it as his guts churned with anticipation, the fingers on both hands crossed as the System chimed out the details of Anyport’s new trade opportunity.

>Trade Quest: Shinki Itten Oranges<

YES fucking YES please please please~!

>Level 20, Rewards–

Aw shit.

The dog people couldn’t have possibly missed the way Rook slumped over in defeat, the bard’s ears folding forward. “What? What’s wrong? Do you not want oranges?”

The Port Master couldn’t resist a mirthless chuckle. “I want oranges so bad. Sailors get a significant bonus at sea for each fruit they eat in a day, and oranges are the best. But they’re impossible to get here.”

“But…” the leader tilted her head once again. “Isn’t this good, then? The quest said–”

“I know, but it doesn’t matter.” Rook sighed again, letting the dregs of his hopes drain away. “The quest is too low level; no Player is going to see it as worth the effort.” The man allowed a heavy dollop of disdain to drip into his voice. “ Anyport has two dozen Trade Quests, but apparently the Players did the math and came to the conclusion that one of them is slightly more efficient than the others. So that’s the only one that ever gets fulfilled. Everything else we can only get in a tiny trickle from Magica City itself.”

The scribe seemed fascinated by this revelation. “Huh! Which Trade Quest is it, then?”

“Cheese. It’s nothing but cheese, day in and day out. Wheels upon wheels upon wheels of it.” Rook raised his voice a final time to the nearby crew. “Hey! What’re you lot bringing in today?”

“Cheese!”

“Shit!”

Stuffing the worthless Trade Agreement and its cruel orange-centric taunts into his pocket, Rook managed a little wave of goodbye before turning away from the visitors from Shinki Itten. Oh well. Better go work on that speech. If Rook achieved nothing else today, he’d at the very least keep the Things out of his dreams tonight. And really, what had he been hoping for? It wasn’t as if–

“So wait, do you not want us to bring you oranges?”

Rook paused midstep, staring blankly at the bard. “Didn’t you just hear me? Players aren’t going to–”

“Who said anything about Players?” The bard bent over the map with Rook’s pen, quickly sketching out the newly formed Southern Searoad. “We’ve got ships. We’ve got people who want to sell things. If you want to buy those things, then what’s the issue?”

“I–” Rook blinked, unconsciously tilting his head in a mimicry of the dog peoples’ gesture. “Wait, you mean…just us? Trading?” When the bard nodded, Rook pressed the issue. “Without a quest? Or Players? Does Shinki Itten not have a quest-based economy?”

At that, the elf finally deigned to speak. “From what I’ve seen, Shinki Itten has precisely one quest. It’s to feed some pigs. It is Level Two.”

Rook absorbed that information as deeply as he could manage. “Could Shinki Itten sell us some pigs?”

The bard shrugged. “I don’t see why not. Oranges too. And rice, and silk, and spirits, and–”

Rook cut him off, his mind happily buzzing once again. “Anyport is hosting a banquet tonight; please come as my honored guests.”

For once, Rook didn’t care if the Things came to him that night. The man finally had something that made him feel again, and from today onward it would be nothing but sweet dreams of even sweeter Oranges.