Gustave was approaching the gate. He had found it after walking along the wall for half an hour. It constantly curved at a slight, consistent angle. Making it impossible to see what came up a little further away.
The gateway was blocked by 2 massive wooden gate doors. In front of it stood a man, clad in leather armor and the bud of halberd in his right hand rested on the ground. Above his head Gustave could see a green 29. In front of the gateway, next to the guard, were 2 horns planted vertically on the ground, the pointy bit in the air. These horns however, even if their texture, color and form were identical to the one he had with him, were about the same height as him.
As Gustave was getting closer to the guard in front of the gateway, both were looking at each other.
Getting closer he wondered, as always, at what point he should start talking to the guard.
It always felt awkward. If he is far away he would have to shout, but if he was closer he felt he should have greeted earlier. If he had already greeted while far away it felt awkward walking closer without talking and talking while getting closer also felt weird.
This time he chose to shout “Hello!” while still far away and waited to speak until he was closer.
The guard just stared at him with a neutral expression.
Once Gustave was closer he initiated again, this time without shouting. "Hello. I’m Gustave. I was wondering if I could get into the city?”
"Yes, you can. Entry toll is 3 copper.” He held his palm out, clearly expecting Gustave to hand over some copper coins.
“Let’s say I don’t have any copper on me right now. Could I trade this rabbit for some?” Gustave replied, holding up the rabbit he had grabbed by the horn.
The guard looked at the rabbit then back at Gustave. “You can trade this Almiraj for 1 copper at the market. The market is every morning on the marketplace.”
Mentally filing away the information, Gustave continued. “You are saying if I catch a few more, could you let me through, so I can trade them at the market and pay the toll?”
“No. Entry toll is 3 copper.”
“Could I maybe give you 3 of these Almiraj instead of the toll?”
“No. Entry toll is 3 copper.”
The guard's voice stayed eerily level and the whole conversation felt a little strange to Gustave. Anyone should have realized what Gustave wanted. Maybe they would demand a bribe if they were a little callous, or if they were more amicable, offered some information, or a solution to his problem. The guard however did nothing of the sort. He could be a little dull, or just bored out of his mind, but the absolute lack of any change in facial expression and tone indicated differently.
He was talking to an npc, or non player character. The realization made him shudder a little. It also gave him a few ideas to test out.
“What will you do if I just try to enter without paying?”
“I will kill you.”
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
It was not the answer he wanted, but one he kind of expected. He had hoped for arrest. In the city. Then he could get in that way if he got desperate.
“Can you do a backflip?”
“I can not answer this question.”
This was the first time the guard denied answering. It also reinforced his idea of him being a npc.
What was different from all other questions? Was it because it was unrelated to entering the city? Technically his second question was not related to entering, but only if viewed separately to the first. More testing was needed, or maybe just straight up asking.
“What can you do?” He asked the question as open ended as he could, hoping it fell into answerable categories.
“I can grant you access into the city and give directions.”
Not quite what he was hoping for and also incomplete. ‘What can you do?’ was not a question asking for directions, neither was ‘What will you do if I try to enter without paying?’, but he had answered them anyway.
The guard giving directions was something Gustave could work with. He just had to formulate the questions right.
“Where can I get 3 copper without going into the city?”
Suddenly the air around the guard changed, he stood a little taller, his voice dropped an octave and his face was painted with expression.
“For as long as recorded history reaches back, the Almiraj have plagued these plains, reproducing too fast to start any proper farming. At the same time they are an important and low effort source of food for us, that is why we have not eliminated them to the last, but some of them grow larger than others.
You see, while hunting Almiraj, accidents are known to occur every now and then. The perpetrators then grow larger from their success and grab anything shiny from their victims.
To protect their new possessions they build underground lairs.
Even if they are bigger, they are still Almiraj, so they populate their lairs with junglings, making the reacquisition of their shiny loot difficult.
If you are lucky you can find almost anything there. If you are ever in need of coins you can go and look in a few Almiraj lairs.
I heard the strongest has started its skill acquisition phase recently, do be careful out there.”
After finishing the quest monologue, for Gustave that is what this was, the guard regained his neutral expression.
Gustave quickly checked his status pages to see if the quest was mentioned somewhere, but did not see anything anywhere. He would have to remember the content himself. For now not a problem, but if he got many active quests it could become difficult.
____________________________
He left the guard and started making his way back to the ones he woke up next to.
Stats, npcs, quests, dungeons, skills. Those were the staples of any rpg. These were also the staple of any isekai story and he had either already encountered them, or the guard had mentioned them.
At least he thought the lairs were dungeons given a different name.
He could have fished for more information, like what the skill acquisition phase was, or how he could unlock more of his status pages, but the guard would surely remain where he was to answer more of his questions later.
Leaving also gave him the opportunity to deal with something important the npc would not help with, because the information he had gathered gave him one immediate problem to solve. One he thought could be solved easily, one he had never thought he would ever have. Finding shelter, finding drinkable water and finding food.
While he was walking he browsed his status pages. Were there skills to create food out of thin air? Maybe someone could build a few houses out of earth using something like earth manipulation.
Where would the skills be at? Skills were the basics for any rpg. If you did not unlock your first skill at the very start of the game, it comes a short time after. Based on that, his best guess was, they were going to get them once ‘Still The Beginning’ was unlocked.
Other than skills, classical stats like strength, intelligence, dexterity and wisdom were also missing, same as classes.
In stories classes were often based on skills you got before the class, in most games however skills were based on classes. He didn’t know what he preferred.
His musings continued, distracting him from the Almiraj peacefully grazing on his path.