Three weeks had passed since Harold returned from his week in the forest.
They were still stuck on the same issues, mostly funding for the expedition and finalizing their members.
Livia had kept busy, hosting a number of parties with the help of Liam and Ella’s personal stores of booze and making use of that and the System to upgrade another one of her Skills, [Play the Host]. The Skill was a Passive, subtly improving her ability to be the charming host in her own abodes, it worked almost like a glamor, although the effect was rather weak.
No longer.
Thankfully she had no need to use up a [Quest] to get it done either, since she had Mr Beard.
[Skill upgrade: Play the Host -> Socialite’s Allure]
When it finally worked she had almost wanted to celebrate, again. But the overall sentiment–that that was enough partying for now–won over in the end.
The new version was only slightly more powerful; but it worked everywhere.
And it also added a certain sense of mystique and progressiveness about her, on top of the attentive and welcoming air the Passive had provided already.
Livia got the sense that the System was being very generous with her when counting her raucous tavern parties as 'socialite events'–if you looked around for somebody to complain to however, then Livia was not it.
In the end she was left feeling very grateful. Although Mr. Beard made that mood hard to maintain.
[I swear Livia. If only you understood half the intricacy of the loopholes I made use of to pull this off for you, you would be groveling. GROVELING.]
"Ow, how did you do that?"
[Do you like it?]
The voice was still the robotic voice of the System, but with Mr Beard's cadence, and now he had apparently learned to yell.
"No, obviously not; and don't do it again, your peeping is bad enough."
[Hmf, come now, it could come in useful, I will use it to warn of imminent emergency situations.]
The voice had started simply ignoring her improper implications; he had made it clear over and over how little anything sexual interested him with no access to any bodily functions or even sensation-based physical emotion.
It was apparently a weird state to be in, but he had been trained to deal with it.
"You won't, it's a distraction and you have terrible timing."
Mr Beard harrumphed again at that, but agreed to let her be in the end.
Now there was another day on the town at hand.
While Livia had been working on upgrading her Skill on her ‘own’, Kalle had attempted their third [Rare Quest]–and failed to upgrade his [Ritualistic Practice]–although he made a lot of progress with the skill, compared to the miniscule headway he had managed before it on his own and with nothing but old folk-tales to go off of in terms of what powerful rituals there were to learn about.
Salcret people were not a superstitious lot, if they did not get it via the System then they were easily convinced it was not of much use. Rituals not excluded.
Some things survived, like greeting the spring with a loud shout from the base of your belly; said to provide you with extra energy for the summer. And there was the events where people dressed up, and told tales with every adult in the cast, not to mention little things to create the belief in mystery and magic for the kids at certain times of the year, when they lost a tooth and got a silver coin beneath their pillow in the morning; the parents had no honest clue where from. It was now just a tradition. But in terms of rituals meant to have a larger- and tangible magic effect. Nothing.
The [Quest] actually had him studying a villager for a few days, who suffered from tics that had them ritualistically performing repeated actions in specific ways until they got them just right.
He did not see the point of the task at all on that first day, the [Quest] simply told him to learn, but on the second day of observing, he realized they were tapping into something, some intuition that guided their hands.
The results when they got things right were always so satisfying, even to Kalle, and they clearly felt that themselves too.
In the end the bonus objective must have meant applying the realization to his Skills somehow, but he did not figure it out in time and the upgrade was a failure.
But things were not all doom and gloom.
Winter was still hanging on, but only just. Another few weeks would bring the first days of spring, and so they needed to use every [Quest] cooldown to recruit now that the three core members had each gotten a shot at it.
Once they got on the road they would have to see if any suitable [Quests] showed up for Livia, but it was unlikely that they would find the time to stop, so chances were they would need to wait until arriving in Dormata. And still no sign of any [Epic Quests], hm. I wonder if we’re missing some requirement, or is there just nothing ‘Epic’ to do around here?
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
This third [Quest] might have been Kalle’s last shot for a while, but he did not look like he was letting it get to him. There were plenty of other avenues for improvement after all.
When Livia came into town it seemed like something was up. She was awake and about later than the others as usual, and only Oscar was around at the [Guild] house to explain the mood.
“Karl and the rest decided on organizing an auction, Redd is apparently selling his old place and so there was a sort of cascading effect, now a bunch of deals are looking to find homes and it’s going down tonight!”
Livia imagined her eyes were filled with dollar signs. “We’re going, gather the lads and the loots!”
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That night the whole town was gathered; even if you did not have anything particular to buy, it was still exciting seeing who would end up with what and if any particularly good or bad deals would take place.
Sten had not been coming by the orchard as much–only for a few very specific training sessions on Kalle’s request–since he had been having some trouble at home and needed to minimise his connection to their [Guild].
He was there tonight though, and so were the three siblings, led by Elin the [Accountant], who had all given a tentative yes to the expedition’s invitation to travel together to Dormata, although the details of whether they would join up with the [Guild] or not remained to be hammered out.
Albert from the brewery was there with his old master, looking to pick up all the prime apples, while Agnes, from the healing house, went through people’s herbal gardens and their produce which was grown year round by some people who had special Skills to shield theirs from winter.
Every [Farmer], every [Rancher], [Hunter] and [Builder]–even everybody from the lumber mill had turned out.
Tonight was when a large portion of their goods from the past season was doled out to the highest bidder, a large section of the audience would be finding out their income for the coming months.
Only a few had the ability and opportunity to bring a caravan of carts to Dormata, and those that did paid well for the privilege, and earned all the more if they made it safely with the cargo intact.
Livia and the gang had gathered over one thousand two hundred silver for their trip, and even if some of it needed to last them on arrival; the highest priority was getting there in the first place.
They had food and some gear, but they needed all kinds of things still. A cart or two, horses or possibly a pony or donkey of some kind if there were not enough, and maybe even some new weaponry, since Livia had sold off her hammer on arrival and did not want to feel defenseless for two weeks of traveling and camping.
They went for it.
They went for it hard–calling out bids and even haggling with favors behind the scenes, when the cause seemed lost–it was to no avail.
They ended up with nothing essentially, even the few things there were plenty of seemed overpriced, or maybe it was festival prices? The bidding fervor seemed completely out of order. Likely influenced by a long, boring winter.
There was a mood throughout Salcret, of having survived another winter and with another summer ahead to look forward to; even if this was taking the victory for granted and in advance a little.
Livia had done her bit to keep morale up with all the partying in the weeks before, but mostly everyone was just having a good day.
Except for the [Guild] it seemed–and possibly the two fellows from the brewery.
Although that one seemed odd since they had made it out with plenty of the better apple batches, even if Lena stole one or two to keep up with sales for her inn and tavern.
The older master seemed to be giving Albert an haranguing for some reason, and the minor celebrity had been avoiding looking at their group all night.
They were all too disappointed in their own evening to be truly curious anyway, they would all need to look for ways to make up for this somehow in the week to come.
Almost the worst part was seeing Redd and the Captain, who was apparently his daughter, happily buying horse after horse and the best cart–even some very nice lumber, and all kinds of things–raising the bar for everyone else, with a wallet that seemed inexhaustible.
Apparently selling a farm that you had been working on for 40 years with all kinds of Skills paid well. Bastards. Give me some! Of course things can’t just be that easy. Sigh.
She felt like shouting out some complaints, and by the looks on some of the other faces among the bidders she was not the only one.
The giant, razor sharp spear, or axe–or whatever it was–kept her tongue tightly under control though.
He seemed like a friendly sort, but even the kindest of men could hide a temper, and Redd looked like he could get scary real fast.
Kalle sighed behind her and they all shared sympathetic nods and gave it up.
Livia started heading back at the head of her group, new plans slowly churning.
Seemed like she was going to have to start playing the margins, she needed an [Accountant].