I finally found a group to adventure with.
“If you want to push to silver, we are not the group for you,” Jules said. “We are mainly crafters and want to get to Silver without using monster cores, but we are not in a rush, and we all have our main job elsewhere. We only plan to go adventuring once a week, maybe twice if we can.”
Jules was taking the lead in the interview, but all four of them were there. After an initial contact, we met for a meal at the restaurant where Jules worked as a chef. He was a human, as was Mara, the shipbuilder. Susan was a Leonid stonemason, but Kim was the scary one. She was Celestine, and she worked for a local merchant as the inward goods inspector and Quality Assessor. Kim had the Eye, Magic, Knowledge and Mystic essences. Nothing got past her.
“What do you need me for?” I asked. “Kim seems to have the scouting role sorted.”
“No,” disagreed Kim, “I am no scout. I am a tactics coordinator and weakness spotter, not a scout.”
Jules agreed, “Kim directs the fights and is great at spotting things that we can exploit, but she considers scouting to be suicidal. I am mostly a support and unofficial healer as I can buff with food, and I have health drain abilities from both my Hunger and Blood essences.”
“What we need you for is not just your scouting but to do more damage,” Kim said. “Susan is our main damage dealer, and it is not enough, especially against fast-moving and flying monsters. She has the Stone, Might, Hammer and Master essences, but she is not fast. I can tether things down temporarily, and then she is good. Jules is good for long fights, as he can keep draining forever and supplying us with boosts. Mara has the wind essence, but her powers all revolve around her vessel. She can literally create a ship.”
“When I get to Silver, I can fly everyone on the ship,” Mara said, “but for now, it is limited to the water, and we are not always near the lake.”
“We will never get lost with Mara as her perception power is literally a map of everywhere she goes,” Jules said.
“I can do a lot of different things with my wood, cloth, wind, and vessel essences,” Mara said, “but it is not great at damaging a lot of other things. It is more defensive, and they really mostly revolve around enhancing my Vessel.”
“Can you summon your ship anywhere?” I ask.
“It takes almost all my Mana,Stamina, and Health, so I am not good for anything afterwards,” Mara replied. “I usually have it tied to the dock. I live onboard.”
“We try to take jobs close to the lake,” Kim said, “Mara transporting us saves a lot on portal costs and increases our profit.”
“I hate the water,” said Susan, and I remembered she had the Stone Essence. It was going to take a bit to get my head around this group.
“Can you increase our damage?” Kim asked. “You told Jules you were an alchemist?”
“I can increase your damage,” I said. “I am orientated around traps and hard, fast ambush and melee. I only recently got to bronze, so I am learning about bronze-rank poisons. Eventually, I should be able to increase everybody's damage with poisons and acids, but I have to create those first.”
“What will that cost us in resources?” Kim, the merchant, asked suspiciously.
“Almost nothing,” I replied. She looked at me sceptically. “I have several Skills that provide me with raw materials, including plants from my Plant essence and other materials from the monsters we hunt. It is a limited looting power that collects resources.”
“What is it called?” asked Kim.
“Reaping Magic.”
“I have never heard of it,” she said, and she lapsed into silence, thinking.
“Is there a problem?” I asked.
All three looked at Kim. She frowned.
“Just tell him,” said Jules.
“I have a looting power,” said Kim, “It is called Pay Day, and I can loot monsters that die in my aura. I am worried it might clash with your Reaping Magic,”
“I guess there is only one way to find out,” I said. “The good news is I have a dimensional Storage called my Hunters Pack we can use to carry those things.”
She gave a funny wobble of her head, “I have an ability from my Magic essence, called Magic Storage, that enables me to create dimensional spaces to store things, so it won’t be necessary.”
“Spaces plural? Wow.”
“Yes and no. Each space I create causes a loss in mana capacity, depending on how large I make it. I don’t get the mana back until I dissolve the space, so there is a cost. It is much more useful now I am bronze.”
“Still, Wow,” I said. “It is going to take me a bit to get my head around what you all do, but I think we can be good for each other. I would like to try it for a few weeks and see how we go.”
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We decided to give it a month's trial, which will be four to six contracts. Jules and Kim usually choose the contracts. Kim has a reasonably refined sense of the profit to be made on each contract, although Jules is the official leader of the Part-timers, as they call themselves.
I didn’t tell them of my association with the Church of Death. As far as they know, I am an Adventurer and apprentice alchemist. I hope I can learn some cooking skills from Jules. That would be awesome.
We met two days later at the dock, and I saw Mara's ship. She said the type of ship was called a Cog. It was about 15m long and had a single vertical mast with a sail. There was a cabin on the deck and a cargo hold under the deck. The Cog had high sides and two side masts, currently folded back against the hull. I didn’t know how she sailed it singlehandedly, but apparently, she did. She really needed at least three crew members to get the best out of it and more to operate the ballista. She had two Ballistas mounted on the front with bronze rank bolts ready to go. The ship was called Mara’s Freedom.
Everybody helped her undock the Freedom and set the sail. They all knew what to do, and I followed as best as possible. The wind swung around and moved us away from the dock smoothly. I assume the wind was under the control of her wind essence. Then the side masts swung out, and they had sails which were parallel to the water which puzzled me. The wind picked up and caught under these side sails, and they started lifting us out of the water, and then we really started to move along at an amazing speed. We were skimming along on the top of the waves.
“They are wings,” Mara said. “I made sure I got the awakening stone for them. I expected them to come from my wind essence, but the wings are actually from my cloth essence.” She had a big grin on her face. She was really enjoying this. “The ship is mostly empty, so we could go for reasonable hops into the air, but we don’t have that far to go this time, and Susan doesn’t like it. I have been pushing my wind skills and my wings, and they are very close to silver, even though a lot of my other skills are lagging behind.” She grinned again. “I am going to fly!”
This was her baby, and this was her passion. I really enjoyed watching someone who was so happy. It was a joy in the simple things.
She didn’t mind Kai exploring the ship. Kai liked it too.
The lake was a lot longer than it was wide. Stillwater was at one end. There was a town about halfway down and a larger town at the far end of the lake. The river continued on to the sea and was wide enough for ships to transport cargo up and down to the coast.
“How come you don’t do cargo runs all the time?” I asked Mara.
“I do some,” she said, “but there is not a lot of coin in it, and I need a crew, especially for the defence.”
“Feel free to call on me,” I said. “This is fun.” She grinned.
I got chatting with Mara; she worked as a boatbuilder and sailmaker, although they mostly only repaired boats at Stillwater. Occasionally, they made fishing or pleasure vessels. The main shipyard was on the coast at the end of the river. She had spent time there as an Iron ranker, learning her trade and living dangerously by sailing the coast and fishing. Her Iron rank Vessel had been smaller, called a Knarr and didn’t have a cabin. She thought her Silver Ranked vessel would be a longer version of the Cog, but it may be upgraded to a Caravel. Caravels are usually double-masted but sometimes triple-masted. She would need a larger crew just to sail it. The key to flying is her wind essence and the tougher, lighter wood.
“What I am actually hoping is that Kim and I team up, and we can become travelling merchants. Kim is great at making coins, and her dimensional storage reduces the weight of the cargo. Jules is tied to Stillwater, and Susan doesn’t really like flying. We will need to hire other crew, but we are planning and working towards it.”
“It sounds like a great plan,” I said.
“I already own a Dimensional Crate for cargo, and I am working toward buying another. The more I can carry at a reduced weight, then the more I can make per cargo run. Kim worked out the crates pay for themselves in twenty-five to thirty trips, depending on what I transport. Paid cargo is usually in D-crates owned by the shipping company, but we can make extra profit with our own cargo per run.”
“Sounds like you have it well worked out,” I said.
It only took us about an hour and a half to get to the edge of the lake where the reports of the monsters were. It would have been most of a day travel around the edge on foot. Most teams would have paid for a portal or a ship if they couldn’t fly.
We slowed, coming up to a shallow edge of the lake. There was a long shallow portion that turned into a swamp that went inland a long way, fed by a small stream feeding into the lake.
“Ok, gather around,” Kim said. The monsters are Swamp Slimes. We are not sure how many. I can see one now, and I can confirm they are bronze rank.”
I looked, but I couldn’t see anything but swamp. I sniffed, and there was a smell of acid magic.
Jules saw me looking at the swamp, “This is our preferred type of contract,” he said. “There is no rush, and we can leverage Kim’s knowledge to put a plan together.”
“There is no time to dawdle, either.” Kim said, “The longer the slimes are in the swamp, the higher the acid content will get and the more it kills everything and can spread into the lake. Here’s the plan. Step one: Susan will wall off the outlet into the lake with stone. This will stop the spread of the acid to the lake. The water level will rise in the swamp, but not significantly in the day or so that it will take in my worst-case scenario. We have some Sodium Carbonate in the hold, and we can build a filter if the acid in the water gets too strong. It shouldn’t, and using it will cut our profits by 5%, so we shouldn’t dawdle.
“Step two: We need to know how many slimes there are and where they are,” she looked at me.
“I have several Kais that should be resistant to low-level acid—the two Chitin Kais, Water and Marble Kai, as well as Bat Kai.” Bat Kai flew off as I was talking.
Kim continued. “Good. Mara has a map; please mark the positions there. Step three: Kill them. This is not easy. We need to get them out of the water, or they will just regenerate faster than we can damage them. I had Mara make some cloth we can use like a net and scoop them out. The acid will eat through them, so we need to be fast. We can test it with the ones closest to the swamp's edge. Once we get them on land, Susan can wall them off so they can’t get back.”
“Can Susan create a stone bowl above the water so we don’t have to move them?” I asked.
“Possibly,” Kim said, “but the mud goes deep, and they will sink a long way. Therefore, she needs a lot of stone to go deep to stop the sinking. It is on my list to try if the nets don’t work.”
“It would take a lot of Mana,” Susan said.
“Once we isolate them from the water, we need to kill them. They are weak to fire, but none of us have the fire essence. I looked at hiring someone, but it would eat up our profit, so I bought some cheap, flammable material that is also in the cargo hold if we need it. The key is to get through the strong acid slime material to kill the core. Susan’s stone spikes will do it, but we don’t want to damage the core if we can, as that is where most of our profit will come from.”
“I might be able to help with that,” I said.