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After saying that, he lowered his scope.

“I can’t say if he, or she, is dead or alive. We should go check,” he said while folding his map.

I looked at him, trying to understand what he was saying.

“And why should we go?” I asked after he put on his backpack.

He looked at me, raising an eyebrow.

“To check if he’s alive, of course,” he said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

My turn to raise my eyebrow.

“And why would you check that?” I asked, trying to understand the extremely stupid thoughts he was surely having.

He frowned. “Are you saying we should just leave?”

I rolled my eyes.

“Well, of course we should leave. What are we doing after we find he’s alive? Finish him?” I asked sarcastically.

“Because,” I continued, seeing he was going to say something with an offended face, “If you are thinking something stupid about saving the guy, then I say you’re nuts. You’ve already brought us your problems, I don’t want another person’s troubles on top of that.”

He looked rather uncomfortable after I finished, but he was stubborn.

“It’s not certain that he will bring us misfortune, and we shouldn’t just let someone die just to avoid potential problems. We could at least hear him out,” he insisted.

Of course, we should hear him out, Silvester. Why are you so stupid?

“Because after he says his sob story, you’re just going to abandon him there, right?” I said, without any absolutely obvious sarcasm. “And it’s absolutely normal to be lying down so far from the road in the middle of nowhere, right? No way a guy like that could bring trouble, riiight?”

He gritted his teeth.

“Listen,” he started, with a determined look, “We will go there and hear what he has to say. If he actually has some issue plaguing him, I’ll let you choose how to handle the situation. Is that right for you?”

“And besides, he may even not be alive. He’s just slightly off our course, and it won’t make us detour too much,” he finished.

Man, such a pain in the ass.

I looked at Freya, who was sitting on a rock, resting.

“What do you say, my silent companion?” I asked her.

She glared at me again.

“Hey, why are you glaring now?” I asked amused.

Then I saw her expression faltering, looking troubled.

“… What should I do then?” she asked me back.

… Could it be she was glaring because she thought it’d please me? I thought surprised.

It felt quite unpleasant, to say the least. I thought we were making progress.

What a shitty day.

“Whatever you think is better. Don't ask me that.” I wanted her to act for her own wants, not to please me. We need to have a talk about this.

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But later, I thought, turning back to Zeph.

“Okay, let’s go then, but remember your words. And if things are going to shit too quickly, I’m going to take Freya and run. If you can’t keep up, it’s your problem,” I stated my terms.

He nodded. “Fine.”

After that, we headed to the, hopefully, dead body.

When we reached it, a few hours later, I turned it around with the scabbard of one of my swords.

I then saw a thin face framed by shoulder-length brown hair. His lips were dry and cracked, and he was cooked red from sunburn. He was wearing what seemed to be dusty oversized clothes of a light-brown color.

I then crouched down and put a hand under his nose. “He’s breathing.”

“Good, I’ll give him a potion—”

“No, we’ll investigate first,” I said, lifting his shirt. Why would one wear clothes so big? I was curious.

Underneath, he was wearing bright purple and green clothes with golden thread decorations.

“Nice. Do nobles get packaged in commoners' clothing now? Strange style, I’d say.” I turned towards Zeph. “No problems, right, mister gladiator? Hahaha!”

He looked like he had eaten a lemon.

“Well, at least you did a better job than him,” I said, pointing at the double-layered idiocy.

He shook his head, changing topic. “At least if you’re doing it, do it properly. Check if he has something on him. I hate to say this, but it’s better if we get a better grasp of the situation before waking him up.”

I patted him down here and there and found a pouch with money and a few trinkets inside, including a hand mirror for some reason. There was also a wax-sealed letter, and a strange disk, that was kept hidden in an internal pocket.

I heard Zeph take a breath when I took it out.

The disk was slightly bigger than a copper coin. It was made of a strange white, stony material, with a glowing gem that seemed to shift colors as you moved it in the center, visible from both sides. The stone had some kind of strange pattern that reminded me of veins, and it felt strangely warm to the touch. It felt disgusting for some reason when I grabbed it.

“What is it?” I asked, turning my gaze to him.

He was looking at the thing with a surprised expression. Then I saw it morphing into something that made me think he really wanted to snatch it from my hand.

“That’s a Heavenshard,” he said after he reined in his emotions, “It’s something so rare and precious that some people would kill to get one.”

I looked at the coin again. I really wanted to just drop it. The disgusting feeling kept increasing for some reason.

“Do you want it?” I asked, raising my hand with the coin on top.

He looked at it for an uncomfortably long time.

“No, put it back,” he said after taking a breath.

I gladly returned it inside the pocket.

“So, can you explain what it was? Or is it another thing you can’t explain?” I asked, after looking at him again.

I was a bit curious about that disgusting feeling, but not enough to ask.

“No, it’s not exactly a secret. It’s just not something that people would usually know,” he said, taking the letter and observing it. “We could call it a currency, only that it isn’t usually used to buy from other people. It’s for the gods’ system.”

He then looked back at me. “It’s made by the churches, and they give it out for an outrageous sum; as a donation, of course. The bigger the church, the more frequently they can produce one, but even the biggest ones rarely produce more than one every three or four decades. And they usually only give it to the rulers or the people with the greatest influence in the region.”

Well, if it was that valuable, it made me want to grab it again despite how disgusting it felt. Mister Nice Guy would probably object, though.

“And what do you buy in that system of yours?” I asked as I patted down the guy some more to be sure he didn’t have any more surprises.

“You can use one to bypass a ten-level quest,” he answered gravely.

I looked at him surprised, “Just that?”

That didn’t seem to be the reaction he expected.

“Just that?! Do you have any idea how hard it is to pass that quest at higher levels? How much time, materials, and talent is needed? Or how much danger it could bring?” he asked, flabbergasted. “And in addition to that, there are some incredibly rare Skills that require you to use one.”

He paused, then shook his head. “I suppose you don’t care, right?”

I shrugged, then got up, “You got me. Now, do you want to check that letter?”

He took out a small, thin, knife and passed it under the seal, popping the letter open without damaging it.

“Nice trick,” I said, giving him a thumbs up.

We could seal it again without anyone noticing now.

“It’s made for this,” he said, waving the knife and taking out the letter.

It was a long letter.

“Can you summarize?” I asked after he finished reading it.

I had no intention of wading through that sea of words.

“Summarizing, it’s a negotiation. The lord of Caldris has been stuck at Level 60 for a long time now. He’s also the only one who has maintained neutrality in this conflict, and swaying him to one side could bring things to a close fairly quickly. It seems that the contract was already signed, and only the exchange was left.”

Nice. We got caught in the middle of something fairly big.

“This looks like some serious shit. Do you still want to wake him up?”

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