“What’s our next move?” Zane asked. He had just finished stretching and taking in the warm sun.

“Before we decide our next move discuss something.” Sophie looked at everyone with a serious expression. “Uncle James and everyone back home asked me to look after everyone. As of now I am officially declaring myself the leader. That means I will have the final say on anything that affects everyone here.” Sophie took a deep breath. “If anyone has a problem with this please speak now.”

“Why would we have a problem?” Jason asked. “We all trust you so there’s no problem with letting you have the final say.”

Zane nodded in acknowledgement of what Jason said. The others also showed signs of agreement in their own way.

“He-he looks like I was worried about nothing.” Sophie said with a smile. “Since I’m the oldest I promise to use my experience to help everyone do well.”

Everyone smiled in agreement but Zane grimaced. He agreed that Sophie would be a great leader but her age had nothing to do with her qualifications. Zane noticed the taunting look in her eyes and turned his head. He was wise enough to know that nothing good would come from arguing with her so he chose to ignore the look in her eyes and silently swallow the loss.

“The first thing we should do is visit the Quest Hall and the Market.” Sophie spoke after clasping her hand in front of her. “What do you guys think?”

“Makes sense to me,” Shane said. “I would like to go to practice my skills at the training ground but we are closer to these two buildings.”

Everyone agreed with what Shane said and decide to start heading to the Quest Hall. After a short walk they entered the red building and their vision went dark.

Zane noticed that the room they were in was much larger than the building they entered once his vision returned. The room had a wooden floor and strange red stones spread throughout the room. The red stones looked similar to a rectangular pillar but they had eight faces. They were twice as tall as Zane and were space a few feet away from each other.

Zane also noticed the people in the room. Some people were standing by the red stones. Others were standing by one of the eight desks that were spaced apart against the walls of the room.

Not long after Zane and the others entered the room a human approached them. He was short with fair skin, dark hair, and dark eyes. He wore silk red shirt and pants. After he approached them, he smiled and greeted them. He gave an introduction about the Quest Hall’s first and second floor. He asked them if they had any question and left when they said no.

“It’s amazing how many buildings are similar to the ones in our town,” Jason said.

“Our town is close to the status of a city,” Sophie said. “The Divine Spirits and the system probably mirrored these building after those that can be found in different cities in the world.”

“Can I take a look at the quest pillar? I’m interested in seeing what quest they have for mages.”

“Go ahead. Everyone should spend some time looking at quest for themselves. I’ll look at the group quest and pick a few that we can do. Let’s meet at the door to the second floor in fifteen minutes.”

Zane and everyone else nodded before heading toward the same quest pillar. Each of them stood in front of one of the faces of the quest pillar. They were familiar with quest pillars but the one in their town was thinner and had two faces which quest could be viewed from. White words appeared on the red face telling the viewer that there were eight types of quest available. There were general quests, group quests and quests for each of the six classes.

This wasn’t how quest were posted in their town but Zane didn’t think this new method was bad. He didn’t waste time looking at quest he wasn’t interested in and could focus on quest related to his class.

The quest for warriors were centered around fighting. There were quests that asked warriors to protect laborers gathering resources. Some asked warriors to be sparring partners for the six different classes. The quests that looked the most interesting to Zane were the champion and challenger quests. These two quests reminded him of the battles that he used to have in the Stadium. After several victories the quests would award the individual village points and experience.

Zane decided to select these two quests while temporarily leaving the other quests alone. He looked at the general quests section and didn’t see anything spectacular. A lot of the quest seemed similar to gathering quests that laborers would do. The difference was these quests gave experience as a reward but they did not reward village points. Zane decided not to accept any quests. He would bring back what he gathered when he went outside of the village and look at the quest pillar to see what matched.

Sophie called out to them and they all backed away from the quest pillar. Zane followed her to a door that led to the second floor and experienced a loss of his senses again. After regaining his senses, he confirmed that the second floor was similar to the first floor. The quests on the second-floor could only be completed during night time. Each quest had many words like ‘danger’, ‘beware’, and ‘caution’ to emphasize the risk a person took when trying to complete them.

The quest pillar only showed general quest and group quest. Zane looked at a few quests before stopping. The quests looked like the difficult version of the quest’s downstairs. Zane saw Sophie looking at the list of quests while everyone else waited for her to finish. After a minute she pulled away from the quest pillar and spoke.

“What do you guys think about the night quest?” Sophie asked.

“I think we can complete them,” Zane said. He thought the quests looked difficult but not impossible.

“It shouldn’t be a problem,” Jason said.

“I saw a quest to fight a mana creature that reached the first tier,” Sophie said.

“That’s surprising,” Zane said. “What level is it?

“The quest said that the creature would be ten levels above the highest-level adventurer at most. We have no idea what level most people are and we don’t know who has the highest level. Even if we don’t accept this quest there is a chance that we might encounter powerful creatures like this when we go out.” Sophie’s words made everyone think more carefully about the dangers in the forest outside of the village.

“Teacher said there are risks and rewards in everything,” Zane said. “We shouldn’t back down because it looks dangerous.”

Sophie frowned at Zane’s words. “It’s easy to say that now but what about when there are mana creatures trying to end our lives.”

“We have received the rewards for coming to the starting village. Where is the risk?” Zane saw her expression change when he asked that question. “It might have been risky when we agreed to come here but, the rewards we received are far greater in comparison. When I trained with Teacher, she would give me paths with different levels of difficulties. It was up to me to determine which path to take.” Zane smiled at everyone. “I’m sure we all remember a story called The Three Children of Fate.”

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Sophie and the others eyes lit up. Zane knew they remembered listening to the story when they were younger and could see how their current situation was related to it.

“Are you saying that we should take the path of the hero? Sophie asked Zane.

“Of course, we should!” Shane shouted out. Zane could see Shane’s eyes were burning with excitement. “Each of us have beaten magical beasts and mana creatures before we obtained our class. Although our enemies are stronger, we’ve grown stronger as well. I say we go for it.”

“I think we should take the path of the mage,” Jason said.

“Even if we chose to avoid danger now, I’m sure the system will have a final obstacle in place.” Zane said while looking at Jason.

“I don’t mind spending more time in the forest,” Shawn said.

“Night is the best time to hunt,” Luna said.

Luna and Shawn were quiet people that spent a lot of time in the forest when they were growing up. Luna was a descendant of the wolf-human race. Although she was human her ears were slightly pointed and her canines were sharper. Luna had silver hair, silver eyes and stronger senses than the average human. Her parents would take her and Lana hunting in the wilderness and let them play in the forest unsupervised.

Shawn had brown skin, light brown eyes and green hair. He was human but many people thought his ancestors might be related to trees. He always tried staying in the forest as long as possible and would be perfectly safe in the wilderness if he kept near the trees. Shawn’s love of the forest and the trees kept him in a constant dirt covered state. A long bath would only keep the dirt off him for a moment.

Sophie sighed when she saw everyone’s eyes on her. “Fine, we can do the night quest.”

“Great!” Zane said. “All we have to do is level up our skills and find a few tier one mana creatures to kill. Before you know it, we’ll have a mountain of village points.”

“You don’t even know what village points are for,” Jason grumbled.

“Then lets got to the market and find out.”

Sophie told the others that she had picked a few quests to do during the night. She said she would cancel the group quests that could be completed during the day. She turned to leave and everyone followed her.

When they exited the Quest Hall Zane saw that there were a lot more people outside than before. They quickly walked to the gold building and entered the door. The first thing Zane saw was a row of stalls. Every stall was made of wood and had a sign that said merchant with a number next to it.

Zane and the others walked past a few stalls without approaching any. The people behind the stalls had different postures and appearances. Each of them seemed to be relaxing as they waited for customers. At Green Valley towns markets the merchants would be making noise and shouting out their prices.

Zane saw someone approach a stall and the calm merchant became excited. The merchant acted as if she and the customer were lifelong friends. Zane pointed out what he saw to the others and they decided to select a merchant to talk to. They chose the young man under the sign that read merchant number forty-two. The young man had brown skin, dark hair, hazel eyes and a friendly smile.

“Greetings friends!” he excitedly shouted. “Welcome to the Market! My name is Merchant Forty-Two and I glad you chose to shop with me! As my first I’ll allow you to shop for as long as you want and ask as much questions as you like. Tell me what would you like to buy?”

Zane and the others recoiled at the overly warm greeting but recovered after seeing the young man start to settle down.

“Hello,” Sophie cautiously said. “We don’t know what you’re offering. How about you make some suggestions? Oh, we already have health, stamina and mana potions and we won’t be buying anymore.”

“Ha-ha, I had a feeling there was a connection between us. All of you should be from this world, right? Since we were born on the same world that makes us brothers and sisters.”

Zane began to think that there was something wrong with this merchant’s head. He knew Shane Lana, Luna and Shawn longer than this merchant and he barely considered them friends. Zane would never casually address strangers as brothers and sisters.

“Let see, I have antidotes, poisons, armors and weapons. This is just the beginning of the items I have for you to purchase. Take your time and see what you like.”

Zane and the others began to carefully look over the items displayed. They did not have the analyze skill so they could only see the basic information provided by the identify talent. They each had their own weapons and armor. Nobody was interested in using poisons and they each had two all purpose antidotes useful against most poisons below the first tier.

“These are decent items but were not interested,” Sophie said. “Even if we were interested, we don’t have enough village points to purchase them.”

“If you don’t have enough village points you can sell some items to me to earn some,” the merchant explained. “A few examples would be your health, stamin and mana potions. The health potion is worth 10,000 points and the other two potions are worth 5,000 points each.”

Now Zane knew this man was crazy. “Each potion increases our chance of survival outside of the village,” Zane told him. “If you think were going to sacrifice that for a few items then someone has given you false information.”

“Calm down little brother. Let me tell you a secret. There are experts at the training grounds will teach you a skill for 100,000 village points. However, since today is your first day as members of the village they will teach you a skill for 10,000 village points. Imagine how much skills you can get after trading in a few potions.”

After hearing what the merchant said Zane started breathing heavily and sweat formed on his palms. He thought about all the skills that he looked at before the mana surge. He now had the opportunity to select some of the skills he passed over before.

“Calm down, calm down,” Sophie said with a red face. “There has to be some catch, right?”

“There is a small catch. You have to know the name of the skill that you’re asking the experts to teach you.”

“We definitely have to trade our potions!” Jason shouted. “Let’s trade half.”

Zane felt himself shaking with excitement. He looked over and saw everyone else looked as excited as he felt.

“No way we can trade that many,” Sophie said. “We need these potions to preserve our lives.” As Sophie spoke, she gradually became calmer.

“Each potion represents one life but aren’t lives meant to be spent?” Zane proposed. “I don’t think we need to hold on to them so tightly.”

“I don’t know anything about spending lives but I do know something about wasting them.” Sophie gave Zane a glare before continuing to speak. “We will only sell one health, stamina and mana potion each. We don’t know what dangers we will face in the future and I don’t think we should be afraid of having too much potions. Also, if anyone doesn’t have enough potions it could affect the entire group. Therefore, I get to make the final decision as the leader.”

Zane and everyone else were ready to argue but said nothing after hearing Sophie’s final words. They weren’t willing to go against Sophie’s first decision as a leader and what she said made sense. Zane dug into his space bag and took out three potions to trade.

“It’s better to master one skill than to learn ten,” Zane said. Although he spoke calmly his face made it seem like he was enduring physical punishment.

“Thank you for your business,” the merchant said after the trade was completed. “You might not be interested in the items in front of you but, I have a few unique items that will definitely catch your interest.”

“Thank you but we will have to decline,” Sophie spoke before the merchant could bring out any more items. “Come on everyone were leaving.”

“Please wait I-”

“No need,” Sophie said while physically pulling the others away from the stall.

“I don’t understand why you’re in such a rush to leave,” Zane said. “We could have looked at the other items that he had to offer.”

“Hmph, this is I why you’re still a child in my eyes.” Sophie wore a superior expression that made Zane’s face twist. “Merchants have skills that can affect other people’s wills. If you don’t have a firm heart when you go shopping you might end up buying half their items. I’m sure the next item he showed us would be great but do we have the money to buy it. The only option would be selling our potions until he ran out of interesting options or we had no potions left to sell.”

Zane was startled by Sophie’s explanation. He didn’t feel like the merchant manipulated him but he did realize that his greed took control of him far faster than it normally would. Whenever he felt greedy thoughts in the past, he was able to calm down and think about his next decision rationally. Just now his only thought was obtaining as much skills as possible.

“She’s right,” Shane said “I’m pretty sure after we sold our potions, he would ask for our supplies and extra weapons. He might have made a contract that forces us to give him some of our future village points.” Shane had a grim expression after he finished speaking.

“I’m glad that everyone understands,” Sophie said. “Now let’s get going.”

“Wait shouldn’t we take a look at the second floor,” Jason said.

Sophie turned and gave him a look before continuing toward the exit. Zane shook his head and followed after her. He heard Jason huff and continue talking as he walked behind him.

“I refuse to believe I’m the only one interested in the second floor.”