“Did Morrison give you much trouble? You were gone for a long time!” Alice asked him as they were examining the boards.
“He wasn’t too bad. Didn’t seem to trust me, though.” Jonathan dismissed the question, more interested in a notice he was currently examining. “What about this one?”
“Nah. The pay isn't worth the time investment” She said after taking a look at the contract. “Escorting corpse retrievals isn’t particularly fun” Alice grimaced, and pointed out the notice she had been looking at. “Culling the undead is where the excitement is! Didn’t you want to level up and fight the cultists? This is the way to do it”
The board was indeed full of missions regarding destroying the undead. Scouts explored the surrounding lands, marked down their locations and reported them back to the Order who created the missions. But Jonathan believed that the undeads were the symptom of the problem, not the cause. The rate they had been popping up, fighting them was like removing water from a boat with a hole in its bottom. It might help for now, but ultimately the boat was bound to sink. No. What he needed was more information, and this kind of mission was sure to provide some.
“I’m not too worried about the money” He ultimately responded. “I can always sell enchantments if I need to. For now, I want to get a better lay of the land and gather more information.”
Alice nodded hesitantly. “That makes sense I suppose. Hold on wait! What do you mean you can just sell enchantments?”
Jonathan drew the dagger he had inscribed and handed it to her. As Alice powered up the runes, a wind blade coated the edges of the weapon.
“Holy crap! You made this?! Can you do my weapon too? I’ve always wanted a magic sword, but those things are too expensive for me! Can you do anything else?”
He chuckled at the enthusiastic outburst. “Sure. But I can only do wind and neutral effects without some additional components. And only the simplest of runes for now.”
As Alice returned the dagger, a thought crossed his mind
“Say, how much would this be worth? I don’t really know the local currency.”
“Probably a slab. Maybe two if you find the right buyer? Hard to say really. The more powerful gear can cost up to several cubes.”
“Slabs? Cubes?” Jonathan asked, and Alice pulled a few small cubes from her money pouch. Holding one up, she started to explain:
“This is a chit. I think the dwarves came up with it originally and now they’re used pretty much everywhere on the first and second ring. If you stack ten of these, they’ll fuse together, making a row. Ten stacked rows is a slab, and ten stacked slabs is a cube.”
Seemed simple enough, although he didn’t still understand how much a single chit was worth.
“How much would a bread from a bakery cost? Or a night at the inn?”
“Probably a chit or two for a loaf of bread. A room at an inn for a night a couple of rows if you want meals included. When you complete jobs, the Order can either pay you in cash or deposit your earnings to your bank and give you bank notes you can exchange for goods if you don’t want to carry money around.” Alice explained helpfully.
Jonathan nodded and focused back on the mission he had been examining. Now the lines at the bottom made sense. After asking Alice for confirmation, the lines indicated that the mission would pay two rows for a successful run, while zombie hunting gave one row per each confirmed kill. If the retrieval missions were more than a few days away, he would be happy to break even with the rewards if he had to pay for his own rations.
“I still say we give it a go. If the undead are as plentiful as you say, we should run into a few on the way.”
“Well,” Alice thought for a moment before nodding hesitantly. “Since you promised to upgrade my weapon, I can take a less lucrative job for now. Want to go right away?”
“Yeah, one more thing. Morrison told me he’d put someone in our group. Keep an eye on me or something like that.”
“He sure did!” A loud voice exclaimed behind them. Jonathan twirled around, seeing a reborn in full plate armor, a mace hung from his side and a tower shield was strapped on his back. Jonathan was instantly on his guard. For some reason, he knew the man, but couldn’t for the life of him remember where. “The name is Gaven! It’s a pleasure to meet you two!”
His manner of speech was polite, but his voice was growly, a byproduct of his draconic mutation. When a dragon died, their souls were shattered into several pieces and flew off to find new hosts. Whoever the soul shard bonded with was mutated into half their original race, half dragon, their personalities mixing into something new and unique. In the planescape their new species went by several names, but the most common one was reborn, as the dragon was reborn in a humanoid form.
His power level was fairly impressive, Jonathan estimating him to be around level forty. Circling mana to his eyes he saw faint outlines of runes coating his armor and mace. Clearly a young, promising elite.
“Oh! I know you!” Alice shook Gaven’s hand, “You are the priest who got turned and joined the Order, right? Who did you serve again… Armeryst?”
“Indeed, that was my human past. Now I have higher aspirations, serving him as a paladin in the Order. My mission is to follow you two and assess our latest recruit, make sure he doesn’t get you killed.”
“You don’t need to worry about that! He promised to take things easy, didn’t you?”
“Yeah..” Jonathan muttered absent mindedly. He knew this man from somewhere. But that was impossible. He hadn’t been in the ringworld before, and this place hadn’t produced planeswalkers for some reason. Jonathan examined Gaven’s aura, in case that provided some clues. It held a touch of divinity, confirming his claimed status as a paladin. Most likely a path of faith, which increased in power as you performed your holy duties, whatever those might be. In the end, however, he didn’t gain any useful information.
“Either case, you’re stuck with me for the time being.” Gaven patted his chest plate while Alice nodded, happy to have another person traveling with them.
The trio signed up for the escort quest and got handed the mission details. They would leave the next morning, giving them a day to prepare. After agreeing to meet at the city gate tomorrow, Jonathan and Alice left the headquarters.
“You don’t have a place to stay, do you?” She asked, as they were walking through the streets again. “You should come to my place! It’s nothing fancy, but we have a spare room you can use! Plus I want to see the enchanting! I’ve never seen it done before!”
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“Thank you.” Jonathan nodded, his mind still fixated on Gaven. Shaking his head, he pulled the dagger out once more, “Do you know of a place where I can sell this?”
“Oh! You could’ve sold it in the Order HQ. They have vendors on the third floor. But if you don’t want to walk back, I know a weaponsmith who could buy it from you.”
Jonathan decided to go with the smith and a short walk later, he was trying to figure out where he should carry the chit slab. It was too wide for his pockets and he had no idea where his backpack was. Alice showed him a trick to break the slab back into rows, and fuse it together, making it easier to pocket.
The rest of the evening was spent going through shops. Jonathan was mostly interested in new clothing, and ended up spending a full eight rows for a sturdy looking set of outdoors wear.
Walking out of the tailor he was wearing a new black, heavy woolen long coat lined with soft silk. Underneath was a soft off-white linen tunic, covered by a dark blue leather west. Sturdy knee high boots covering and denim pants finished the outfit, making Jonathan feel like a new man. He quite enjoyed the fashion in the city, and was pleased to dress the part. The one complaint he had was the choices of color, as he enjoyed lighter grays and greens.
“No armor?” Alice asked as soon as she saw his outfit.
“I plan to stay further away from harm's reach this time.” Jonathan shrugged. Casters rarely wore armor in any case, and he would fashion some protective trinkets when he got the materials.
“You’re learning! That’s good at least!” She chuckled, “It’s getting quite late, so we better get a move on!”
They walked back to Alice’s house, a small two story building nestled in the residential district. The house was empty, her parents still working. Alice showed him the room he could use until he got himself more established and some time later the two were gathered around the dining table, Jonathan examining her sword.
“I have just barely enough mana for three runes. Do you want the same wind blade inscription, or did you have something else in mind?” He asked, pulling out his rune pen.
“What would you need to make me a fire sword?” She asked, interested in learning more..
“At the minimum, I’d need to get my hands on a fire-attuned pen, but the results wouldn’t be as good, since I lack the corresponding affinity.” He explained.
“Why is that? Most wizards have multiple, so they can have variety in combat. Aren’t you limiting yourself with only one channel?”
“More isn’t always better. Sure, there are some disadvantages with my approach, but I find it better to be a master of a certain type, than dabble in multiple.” Plus a planar core required a full devotion to a single primordial element, making it his primary reason not to branch out. In the planescape the topic was hotly debated. Was the ability to planeswalk worth the lack of versatility. Jonathan thought it was. “So, windblade?”
Alice gave her consent, and Jonathan got to work, drawing the runes with ease. He had several advantages when it came to creating air based effects: the planar core was a direct connection to the Primordial air itself, and allowed him to infuse the wind rune with its energies, while his mastery in wind manipulation would make the mana required to channel the enchantment extremely low. The only things that could make it better was if the sword itself was made out of a material already suited for air mana, and if he had more power to add a couple strengthening runes.
As before, the runes pulsed a few times and sank into the blade. After testing everything out, he returned the blade to Alice who accepted it with gleaming eyes. She immediately activated the inscription, coating the edges with sharpened wind.
“Holy crap! The mana draw is miniscule! Do you know how long I can keep this up?”
“A bit less than two hours at full mana. However, every hit you make drains a bit more out of you, so if your intelligence is ten, you should be able to get a good thirty or forty hits in before you’re tapped out. Later on if you find a sword with a gem insert, I can make that store energy, so you can focus your own mana elsewhere in fights”
“Thank you!” She said, swinging the sword through the air, testing out if anything was different.
Jonathan allowed his mana to recover. Without any gear, all he had to rely on was his base level wisdom, meaning roughly one point every half a minute. It took a bit over two hours to get back to full. During the wait he inspected his coat. The wool was durable, but wasn’t made to hold mana. At best, it would take one rune, and even that much could destroy the item. The vest was far more durable in that regard, but still couldn’t hold more than two of them. He needed at least three slots for the basic protection inscription. Well, too bad. He would have to risk it for a while. Perhaps after the mission he would offer his services for cheap to build up some capital.
At the brink of dawn, Jonathan and Alice met Gaven at the city gates, who was already waiting for them with their contact. A young human with brown hair and eyes was tending a horse that was connected to a cart. He greeted the newcomers, introducing himself as Leb, and the group departed from the city, walking beside the cart.
They traveled deeper towards the mountain, which still was a good distance away from the city. Alice told Jonathan the various legends surrounding the landmark. What was interesting to him was that the people who scaled the mountain never returned after reaching the halfway point. Even skyships who approached the peak soon crashed, leaving no survivors. To Jonathan, this was highly suspicious, but to the locals it was just the way things were. Leb joked about the vampire living at the top, capturing climbers who came too close to its stronghold.
The journey came to a halt when the adventurers felt something, multiple somethings, moving in the mist in front of them.
Gaven took his shield from his back, stepping between the cart and the danger, as Alice got ready, her sword held in hand.
Jonathan in turn didn’t want to wait for the people to approach, and channeled a gust of wind, dispersing the fog in front for a good hundred meters. A dozen shambling undead were slowly making their way towards them, probably attracted by the noise their cart was making. Leb hid behind the trio of adventurers as they all prepared for a fight.
The zombies noticed them, their hollow eyes fixated on Gaven as they increased their pace. Gaven and Alice rushed into action, engaging the undead. The reborn took a more defensive approach, knocking his opponents down with his shield, while letting Alice do the heavy lifting. He was there to oversee them after all, so it made sense he didn’t just take care of the problem by himself.
Alice’s blade cut through the rotting flesh and bones with ease, thanks to the new upgrade to her weapon. Jonathan walked slowly forwards, sending air cannons to disrupt the enemies. The zombies were weak, probably not stronger than a base human would be, and the group managed to dispatch the enemies within a minute.
Jonathan felt disappointed. It wasn’t even a good warm up, and he hadn’t gained anything from the bout. He walked up to Gaven and Alice, who were in the middle of a discussion.
“-No.” The reborn shook his head. “The mission is to retrieve the corpses from the village, so the city can get a proper count of the dead. Carrying those would just be extra weight and muddy up the estimations.”
“So what do we do with them? Do we just leave them here to rot?” Alice asked in turn.
“Let me take care of it.” Gaven walked to the nearest corpse, and knelt down, placing his hand on top of it. “Ameryst, you who hold power over the ground and its riches, take these fallen under your wing, turning their feeble bodies treasures of your kingdom. Make them anew from gold and jewels, and have them guard the wealth that is rightfully yours.”
After he had finished his prayer, the ground swallowed the fallen undead, leaving no trace of them to be seen.
“What did you do that for?” Jonathan challenged the man. “We could’ve at least examined them. They could’ve provided information of where they came from or how they were made.”
Gaven stood up and attached his shield back to its place.
“The Order has all the information they need. They have been dead for ages, and have no magical threads connecting them, meaning that they are natural. What more information would you like?”
Even if his explanation was decent, Jonathan didn’t let the matter go. For some reason he wanted to dismiss everything Gaven had said, feeling oddly hostile towards the paladin.
“Oh is that right? Then why have they appeared recently? Right around the time the cult started to raze settlements.”
Gaven shrugged, choosing not to answer. Either he didn’t know or didn’t care. Or worse, knew something and chose not to tell him. Ignoring the urge to shake the answers out of him, Jonathan exhaled.
“Don’t engage the next group unless we’re in danger. With you in the fight, their combined level isn’t high enough to let me power up. You too, Alice. I want to see how well I can handle myself against them.”
Alice nodded hesitantly, while Gaven grunted. They returned to Leb, and shortly after, were once more moving through the mist.