> Quote:26/9/2015. Minor changes and fixes.

It was Thursday, Nicholas was having dinner after finishing his morning routines, he had time until the next Monday when his studies started to spend in LoI so he wasn't in a rush, but he was very eager to get started.

He ate his lunch while watching the news, apparently someone famous in LoI had done something which he didn't understand any of right now, but it seemed the news reporters found it amazing.

After entering the game the dwarf girl was met with a hot gust of wind from the bellows of the smithy which took her by surprise and made her tumble backwards on her behind.

"Note to self, find a better sleeping spot. Preferably inside"

She lift herself up and headed towards the Adventurers hall which was across the market.

The Adventurers hall was a place where people looked for assistance with all sorts of jobs or activities, it was basically the place for people to go if they wanted to work without being tied to a contract.

It was very early in the morning yet you couldn't find an empty stand in the whole market, while Aleyn was making her way to the adventurers hall she heard a massive crash.

"Shit!, now what do I do?" could be heard from a merchant on his knees next to a toppled carriage, it seems the carriage couldn't take the weight of the produce and one of the wheels broke.

Aleyn looked at the event but decided to ignore it, she didn't really have a way to help the merchant so there was no real reason to bother.

As Aleyn had entered the adventurers hall she immediately noticed the lack of people inside.

"Too early?" was her first thought, but she saw a man standing behind the counter at the other end of the room so it couldn't be too early to talk with the clerk at least.

"Welcome to the Adventurers Hall, can't say i remember your face are you new around here?" asked the clerk while stroking his impressive moustache.

The clerk was a human with short dark hair, his stature was that of a British boxer you could see in old movies and his moustache complimented that image.

"Uhm, yes I just arrived here today and I'm looking for work. Is it too early? There doesn't seem to be that many people here surprisingly." Aleyn asked.

The clerk took a quick look around the room and said "Oh no no. It ain't too early. I don't really want to generalize but it just seems that people who do adventure work aren't early birds"

Aleyn shrugged "Well more work for me then."

The clerk chuckled "That's the spirit girl." but then took a serious look at her

"I suppose you're here for copper jobs. No offense but you don't see like you could handle much higher."

The ranking system consisted of 6 different ranks Mithril, Gold, Silver, Bronze, Tin and Copper being the worst.

"You're correct Mr... erm."

She stopped to see any indication of a name, the only thing she could see was a plate saying clerk .

"Johnson, Norrison Johnson. Just call me John" he said with a bow.

"Aleyn" she replied

"So John is there any copper rank work to do?" Aleyn said with a smile.

"Well, it depends on what you're looking for.. there's a lot of work that no one wants to do and can barely be called copper rank jobs and I would consider easy coin, then we have the proper list of actual copper jobs on the copper rank billboard over there."

John pointed towards the left wall. The wall was filled with papers requesting help for different sort of jobs, from gathering wood to killing some pests.

"I don't really have any money at the moment so I guess I'll start with easy coin. Would be nice to have enough money to stay at a inn at least." Aleyn said while scratching the back of her head showing her embarrassment.

John went to the backroom for a moment and came back with a stack of requests, "Take a seat and look for what interests you."

After leaving the hall Aleyn had claimed 2 jobs which she considered to be good for starters. A request for picking a certain common flower for the towns alchemist and someone to help clean the inn.

"The inn is close so guess I'll go there first"

As she entered the inn she was assaulted by the dust which had been cultivating with many adventurers.

"Cough.. Cough" it took her by surprise slightly as she was moving towards the counter to talk to what looked like the inns owner doing paper work.

"Oh its you again, I'm sorry but I'm not here to hand more freebies, you were lucky we had no use for that map"the innkeeper said after taking a glance at Aleyn, it was the exact same inn where she had gotten the old map she used.

"I'm here because of the request you put on cleaning." Aleyn said as she ignored what the woman in front of her had said.

"Ooh someone willing to help with cleaning! Come come lets get started right away!."

The owner took Aleyn by surprise and dragged her to the back room where she was handed a broom, few rags and a bucket.

"So to get your payment you need to clean the windows, sweep the floor and change the sheets on the beds, there's 7 rooms and each one has a closet with the sheets inside."

Aleyn was nodding and listening to the explanation.

"Try and finish the job fast and if someone comes in trying to cause a ruckus then just come and find me. You got all of that?"

Aleyn nodded again

"well then off you go" the innkeeper pushed her out of the room and continued doing paper work.

It only took around 30 minutes to clean a room since Aleyn was familiar with having responsibilities like cleaning her own house so she finished it at rapid pace.

As she was starting on the last window she heard someone rushing towards the room and then the door opened suddenly.

"Is the room ready soon? We just got a huge group of people booking rooms and they want to leave their belongings." The innkeeper seemed to be in quite a hurry to get things done.

"Just need to finish this window and make the bed, it shouldn't take more than 10 minutes if they can wait." Aleyn said while still cleaning the window, time was of the essence it seems.

"Okay I'll inform the group that they can move in soon." the innkeeper yelled while already half way back to the front desk, she was definitely in a hurry.

As Aleyn was leaving the room she noticed a group of people heading up the stairs.

"Guess those are the people" She thought to herself while looking at them.

The group looked like a typical adventurer party. A tall person in full body armor making it hard to distinguish their race and gender, wielding a shield and a sword.

A tall slender man that seemed to be human, only dressed in a robe and wielding a staff, most likely a mage of some sort.

Two men of equal height hidden under a cloak, one had to be a hunter of some sort since he had a bow strapped on his back, the other one held no indication of what they were until you saw the two bulges on the sides of his waist resembling dagger handles.

Behind the two men you could see a woman that overshadowed both the mage and the warrior in height and width, wearing body armor, but no helmet leaving her long red hair hanging around her head and the huge sword behind her back. She was either a Norn or the tallest human woman ever.

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She was talking with someone, but it was hard to see from Aleyns angle, but as they got closer she saw spotted who the Norn was talking to.

A girl glad in a white robe holding a staff which had patterns over its head. It wasn't just any sort of girl though, pointy ears noble air and blonde hair. She had to be an elf of some sort, but even with the staff you didn't get the feeling she was a mage.

As Aleyn passed the group and she was heading towards the innkeeper for her reward, she noticed the innkeeper sitting in at the reception with a huge smile.

"I've finished the job, rooms are clean and it looks like the group was heading there just now."

The innkeeper snapped out of her smile "Good work, you freed up so much time for me, paper works usually a nightmare."

"Three silver and twenty copper, like said on the request, I looked at the rooms after you were done with them, you did your job admirably. If you ever want some extra money you can always come and clean rooms again." the innkeeper said as she handed the money to Aleyn.

"I'm glad my work was up to standards. I'll be sure to keep that in mind if I the need extra money" Aleyn said while smiling.

It was time for her second job request so she took off and started heading towards the alchemists house.

Aleyn entered the alchemists shop after traveling through the whole town, inconveniently the Inn and the alchemists shop were on the opposite sides of the town.

"Hello?"

Aleyn raised her voice after seeing no one in the shop and after hearing no response she moved closer towards the counter and repeated slightly louder.

"Hello!?"

Suddenly a thud could be heard and someone grunting. Few moments later a dwarf glad in a dark grey robe and a black beard stumbled from the room behind while yawning.

"Sorry if i kept ya waiting, was taking a nap." he said drowsily as he moved behind the counter

"So what are ya after ?"

"I'm here because of the work request for picking herbs." Aleyn replied.

The dwarfs eyes shot open for a moment "Finally, been waiting for someone for few days!" the old dwarf took a book and a basket from behind the counter.

"I want you to fill this basket with Snowstars, they're practically everywhere, but once you get to the snowy areas it becomes a pain in the head to collect em." The dwarf explained.

He opened the book and shuffled through the pages.

"Here's what it looks like, it's the only flower in the mountains that has white colour and like I said, it grows everywhere, but its used in almost every sort of potion so I really need it."

The picture that was shown had a small flower with 4 petals and a short neck, making it seem like the whole flower was just the petals.

"Understood." She gave a nod of acknowledgement picked up the basket.

"I'll be off then." She waved while walking out.

Aleyn returned to the store with a basket full of flowers, "That didn't take too long, now did it? Here's ya pay."she took the few coins and put em in her coin pouch.

The dwarf took the basket and sighed.

"Wish I had more time, brewing all of this and attending the store is going to do my head in." the dwarf muttered and went to the back room.

"I could help if you taught me the process Mr. Alchemist." Aleyn raised her voice so the old dwarf could hear her.

"Ya wanna learn? Well okay come here then and the names Heber not Mr Alchemist." the dwarf yelled from the backroom.

As Aleyn entered the back room she was met with a collection shelves all filed with vials, some filled with herbs or liquids, some empty.

"There's not that much I need teach ya to be quite honest. A lot of alchemy is about discovering and testing but I'll teach ya how to use the alchemy tools at least." Heber said as he picked up a mortar and a few vials.

"You'll be using these to make the Snowstars in to powder, not the ones you picked up though, those need to be hanged up somewhere to dry or it'll be impossible to do anything with em."

He said as he put the basked on the other side of the room and picked up another basket and brought it to Aleyn.

"So what you need to do is put your wrist in to it like so." he ground the petals for a good 5 minutes and the end result was indeed some fine powder.

"Now as much as it's quite simple to grind them to dust, if you don't have any wrist muscles you can hurt yourself so take a break every now and then." he said as he passed the rock to her.

She took some petals and started grinding them and after a bit longer period she was done with her first patch and went straight in to the next one.

Aleyn had been working for a while and was almost finished with the basket of herbs and had a plate full of fine Snowstar dust next to her.

"Wrist hurting yet?" Heber yelled from the front of the shop.

Aleyn and Heber had been talking about random things on and off over the time of the grinding to pass the time while the shop was empty.

"Yeah its aching alright, but I'm almost done so it isn't that bad." she said while placing the last pedals in the mortar.

"Oh good, we can move on to actually make something then." Heber jumped off his seat and walked to the backroom.

"This is really good, not many people can be bothered to make such fine powder." Heber took a bit of dust and rolled it around his fingers.

Heber picked up a few vials and put them on the table

"So what you need to do next is take some vials and fill them with water then pour enough dust into them that they turn red. These healing potions don't need anything special like heating".

Aleyn picked up a vial and started filling it, the water filled around 2/3 of it when Heber told her to stop.

"Okay that's enough now pour some dust in."

Aleyn took a piece of paper, made a funnel for the dust and started pouring.

It took all of the dust Aleyn milled just to make 4 Vials of Healing potion.

"Nicely done, the quality is superb." Heber said as he shook the vial looking for clumps and impurities.

"You could say that you're an Alchemist now in theory."

Aleyn smiled knowing that it probably wasn't that simple.

"Thanks Heber, I've never used a mortar before so having the experience is nice." She said and proceeded to clean the equipment with a brush and a wet towel.

Heber thought for a moment after seeing her be so eager.

"Ya know what, hold on a minute." He said as he went to the front desk.

Heber came back with a dusty book a lot smaller than the one where he showed what a Snowstar looked like.

"This is the alchemy book I used when I was learning, it has mostly information on herbs in it, but it also has the notes I made over my studies on them." He said as he gave the book to Aleyn.

"If ya ever want to come mill or brew something then don't be afraid to ask, nice to have some company every now and then"

"Thanks Heber, really appreciate it." Aleyn was thrilled with the book, it would definitely become useful if she ever comes across strange plants or needed something simple made.