Chapter 23:

We headed down the street, just ambling along. As we walked, Bjorn told me about a duel between a woman and a man they had watched earlier. To his surprise, they were almost perfectly matched. It wasn't possible to tell the power of their magic from that one fight, but it was good to know that it could make a huge difference. The man had higher physical attributes, having trained them in Valhalla's Lesser Hall for much longer, while the woman had actually been using magic with her rapier. Whenever it seemed like the man could get in a good blow, a gust of wind would blow him off balance.

"You should have seen his face!" Bjorn roared as he doubled over in mirth at the memory.

I gave a polite chuckle at the boisterous retelling but couldn't muster up the same enthusiasm for a fight I hadn't seen. The idea of using magic in a fight did seem rather useful now. I wanted to cut in, but Bjorn threw his arms around both of our shoulders.

"I need another drink," he announced, steering us towards a certain spot.

"Back at our hall?" Jonas asked, watching a woman walk by.

I grimaced. "I don't think I'm allowed to drink there."

They looked at me and saw the truth in my expression. "Shit. Yeah, that's right. We can only eat and drink at our own newbie halls," Bjorn noted.

I looked at the two of them. "Don't suppose either of you managed to get any coin?"

They shook their heads. "No, don't have anything to sell and didn't want to try to do a duel without understanding what all these people could do," Jonas said with a shrug. "Haven't figured out what the levels mean yet."

"What about how to assign free stats?" I asked.

The two of them shook their heads. "Nah, but it doesn't make sense to start trying to fight when we don't even understand what we can do," Jonas responded.

"Well, duels aren't the only way to make money here, from what I can tell," I ventured, and Bjorn nodded.

"I don't see any other real options," Jonas protested. "We don't have any weapons. How can we do the challenge without any weapons? Besides, we're supposed to have a party of five."

His assertion that we didn't have any weapons struck me as odd. My heart rate picked up as I patted my waistband and couldn't find my dagger. Then my hopes crashed as I confirmed that it wasn't on my person anymore. We hadn't been able to take our weapons to the orientation, but I didn't remember having them after I got here at all. I would need to ask Loki about that. I didn't agree to it disappearing after the Lesser Hall.

"Well, there's probably some way to get weapons. Maybe someone will lend them to us, or we can pay them with whatever we win from the challenge or something. Take a loan?" I suggested.

Bjorn didn't seem to understand, but Jonas shrugged. "Maybe. Haven't asked about it yet."

"Come on, let's go see where we can buy weapons," I said. "We get unlimited attempts for the first month. We should take advantage of that."

The two looked at each other and shrugged. "I guess it's just weird being able to think," Jonas said as he watched someone else walk by.

Bjorn rubbed his head. "Yeah, thinking. At least alcohol stops that here."

I looked at the two of them strangely. They were different from who I remembered in the hall, but I shook my head. I suppose that's to be expected with freedom and choices. How well do you know people without seeing the results of their actions?

Bjorn pulled us into a random tavern that didn't look too fancy and drew everyone's gaze as we opened the door. Most people snorted at our plain linen clothes and lack of weapons before turning back to their drinks, but not everyone. The bartender looked at us and waved us over from where he was cleaning a very clean glass.

"New here, huh? Got coin yet?" he asked.

I shook my head ruefully, and he scoffed. "Newbies," he muttered. I thought he was about to just go back to polishing his glass, but he looked up at us. "A word of advice: don't take any loans until you get coins. Just run the challenge as fast as you can. The loan sharks are never worth it."

I nodded. "Thanks for the tip. What about general information? Is there anyone willing to talk with us?"

The man shrugged. "Yeah, sure. It depends on what you want to know. Levels, you get them through the challenge. Nothing else. You can still train your stats up a little bit, but likely, they're high enough where that won't matter. Especially after you have a few levels under your belt, you'll never be able to train them up manually."

"Assigning free points?" I asked, not believing my luck that someone was willing to just talk.

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The man put the glass down and picked up another clean glass, starting to polish it as well. "Yeah, now that takes some coin. You need to buy a new ritual. You might be able to figure it out yourself, but unless you're some sort of magic genius, best to go get the training. It costs only a coin, no more than room and board for a month."

I blinked. Room and board for a month only cost one coin, and that wasn't considered much? "Thanks, man."

I looked behind me and saw that Bjorn had joined a group of people and was stealing someone's drink while Jonas was attempting to talk to a barbarian woman who was doing her best to ignore him. The man followed my gaze and shook his head.

"You better get your friends before they get themselves in trouble."

I agreed and pulled Jonas away before the woman could slap him. Together, we hustled Bjorn out, and only after we got out did he reveal the mug that he had somehow swiped from one of the people he'd been talking to. He laughed as he downed the ale and tossed it over his shoulder.

"Ah, a good drink!"

I exchanged looks with Jonas. We both shook our heads. Bjorn had never left us with any doubts about his love of alcohol. I wondered how much he enjoyed his hangovers now.

"Well, if the guy was right about loan sharks, we should just head over to the challenge," I suggested.

"Sure, sure," Bjorn said, and Jonas just shrugged as we started walking back toward the center of the city. Along the way, I ducked into a general store. It made sense to at least see what everyone had available.

The room was large but not overly so, and a sleepy-looking older woman sat behind a counter with glazed eyes, making no move of recognition as we walked in.

"Is that one of those avatars they talked about?" I wondered out loud.

I looked at the merchandise. One side of the wall was completely full of weapons. Pretty much everything had one or two representations, though none seemed to be in particularly good shape. The other half was full of glass vials, and in the back, there were rows of books underneath glass and behind locks.

Bjorn and Jonas walked over to the weapons, and I went over to the potions. I read the price tags: 100 coins for the lesser healing potion, all the way up to the Elixir of Life, which was 100 million coins. One coin was a month of room and board. Maybe really, really shitty room and board.

"Jesus," I cursed under my breath. Was this what Loki was offering when I was in the Lesser Hall? I could have gotten a healing potion. He should have said something.

I checked, and various versions of the buffs that I had used were there. The plus five to all stats buff was actually 10,000 coins. This place made no sense. But there were more than just healing and buffing potions. There were stamina potions, poisons, and mana potions with lots of options. There was nothing like a permanent stat potion that I figured there might be.

As I wandered the shelves, I saw I could make out the labels on the books. They were skill books and spell books.

I saw one that was reasonably priced at only 50 coins, which was a general inspection skill that I knew I needed as soon as I could afford it. But again, nothing was even close to our price range except the guide to the "Customizable ritual." I joined Bjorn and Jonas at the rack as they debated over whether or not a halberd was worth anything. The particular one looked fine to me, but Jonas wasn't a huge fan, while Bjorn thought it was decent.

The weapon prices were similar, starting off at 100 coins for the lowest and working their way up. They had labels, but they didn't really mean anything to me, though they did list the maker.

"Got an idea of how much you need to kit yourself out?" I asked.

Jonas nodded. Bjorn shrugged. "Hey, I can always use more weapons, but I can also use none," he said, shaking his fist at my face with a gleeful smile.

"Well, I guess we go find the challenge entrance," I said in a questioning tone.

We headed out of the shop in silence, the storekeeper not having reacted to our presence once. As we continued on, we mostly kept to our own thoughts. I was running numbers, trying to figure out how much I would need. After I did some quick math, I figured out I needed at least a few healing potions and some general temporary buffs. Also, I needed some sort of weapon, though I hadn't seen any armor. It was odd, but I wasn't sure if that was something that people used here or not.

I paused my thoughts and looked up to ask, "Hey, did anyone use armor around here in the duels you saw?"

The two looked at each other and shook their heads. "Nah. Why would they?"

I blinked. "Was this another brain fog thing? Um, so they don't get injured as much?"

"Yeah, that's probably a good idea," Jonas said. Then, we continued walking without further comment. Well, the brain fog still covered that, apparently.

"Uh, okay. I guess that's nice that we don't have to worry about people wearing armor or fighting with armor. Less expensive," I mused. "Maybe it's something that happens in the later hall."

They ignored this, and we kept moving on.

After about 20 minutes more of walking, with only the occasional question tossed between us, we finally arrived at the entrance to the challenge. It was a massive black stone building with a sign out front listing the current description. It was not much more than what we had been told, but it did give us a posted entry of two coins.

Below was a basic chart of possible loot, though not probabilities, just values of how much each loot item was worth if sold upon exit. The sign did mention that prices may vary in the city.

I looked, and it seemed that as long as you picked up one or two pieces of loot, you were pretty much guaranteed to make a profit. Since one coin covered room and board for a month, it seemed you probably only needed to run the dungeon a couple of times to make sure you had enough for the next month's rent and food.

There was an ominous note at the end: "Runs must be completed by the end of the month or face punishment. This month's Administrator: Thor."