Elise sat alone in the guild’s main hall, still trying to fully digest her conversation with the guildmaster. She felt at her chest, where a small metal badge was pinned to her jacket. Of all the things they’d talked about, for some reason the most unbelievable thing of them all is that she was finally an adventurer. She’d dreamed of this moment for over a decade, and now that it was finally here it felt...
She wasn’t exactly sure how it felt. Just this morning, she’d gone from ecstatic about getting her first skill, to frustrated about her lack of skill slots, and now hopeful at the idea of forming an adventuring team. Of course, forming a team wouldn’t happen immediately. One thing the guildmaster had stressed is that she needed to progress as an adventurer on her own first; if some random rookie adventurer suddenly appeared with a team chock full of powerful skill users, it’d surely draw attention. No, her first task was to start taking quests on her own.
Aside from the adventurers badge, there were two other things Elise had received from Leon. The first was a downpayment on her contract, giving her coinpouch some heft that she could feel at her side. She’d been given what Leon called ‘the typical skill-broker contract, plus a bit extra’. Even with the secret plan of her forming a team, he still needed her to function as a regular skill broker. The guild would keep her identity a secret as she used Skill Transfer on their behalf. So long as she made a reasonable attempt to keep up with demand, she’d be getting paid much more than your typical employee. Elise wanted to take the money she’d just got and spend it on gear for adventuring, but that would come later. She already had a good sword and some decent leather armor, and all the quests she planned on starting with weren’t too dangerous and wouldn’t require any enchanted gear. Still, it was comforting to know that when she began to fall behind due to lack of Skills, she’d at least be able to buy powerful enough equipment to compensate.
The final thing she’d received wasn’t physical at all. With a mental command, Elise opened up her skill interface and looked inside the ethereal tome that came with her skill. To her, it looked like a translucent blue book with a slight glow, hovering in the air in front of her. She could make it visible to others if she wanted to, but right now she made sure she was the sole viewer. Inside the pages of the book, there were now four skills. Two copies of Slash, one Heat Metal, and one Summon Shield, all at rank D. Low rank skills weren’t that expensive, and Leon had wanted Elise to begin learning how to craft skills into more powerful ones. The Slashes were meant to form a C rank Double Slash, while the other two skills would combine to form a C rank Flaming Shield. Still, while the guildmaster knew from the recipes that combining those skills would be possible, he’d been unable to provide any instructions on how the process of combining skills actually worked.
Elise sat in the guild hall for over an hour, trying to work out how to combine the skills to no avail. She attempted everything she could think of, from mentally visualizing two skills morphing into one, to reaching out and smashing together the pages of the skill tome. At one point, she even pulled out her sword and mimicked how the Double Slash skill was meant to look, which only got her a few weird looks from passing adventurers. She sat down, disappointed but not entirely dejected. Anything in life worth doing took time, and this was no different. She’d work on it, but for now, there were more important things at hand. For instance...
“Um, hello. Are you alright?” A guild receptionist had come over after noticing Elise’s erratic behavior at the table. Normally, all weird behavior got chalked up to adventurers being adventures, but guild employees typically recognized each other, and so the receptionist had reasonably gotten concerned when he noticed a swordplay instructor randomly slashing the air.
“I’m fine, thanks.” Elise didn’t know the receptionist’s name but she did recognize his face. She’d seen him earlier in the morning, while he’d been adding a fresh batch of quests to the questboard.
“Is there anything I can help you with?” the receptionist asked. Elise was about to refuse, but before the words could leave her mouth she hesitated for a second. Now that she thought about it, there was something that he could help with.
“Actually, I think there is. You handle the quests, right?”
“I do. Are you thinking of taking one?”
“I am. I just got my adventurer’s badge today, so I’m looking for something easy. Something to the east, preferably.”
The receptionist nodded, and the two headed towards the questboard to discuss potential quests for Elise to take. While she was sure she’d have been able to pick out a nice easy quest on her own, it didn’t hurt to have someone more well acquainted with the system to pick one out for her.
“I’d recommend this one,” the receptionist said, pulling a piece of parchment from the wall. “It’s a scouting quest around the eastern trade routes, asking for adventures to investigate recent goblin activity. We put these up fairly regularly just to prevent goblins from forming dens too close to the city. You don’t even have to enter combat, if you find any goblins you can mark their location and come back here, and that would count as completing the quest. Of course, there is also a bonus reward for any goblins you do happen to slay, but that’s not necessary.”
“Why hasn’t this quest been taken?” Elise asked. It seemed like an incredibly easy way to earn a decent chunk of change, so she was a bit suspicious that the morning rush of adventurers hadn’t snatched it up yet.
“Oh, you haven’t heard? Apparently, a Wyvern Lord got spotted in the north, so there’s a ton of quests over there now. Everyone’s rushing to try and kill it, so there’s been less people to take simple quests like this.”
“Ah, makes sense.” Elise was somewhat tempted to put the quest down and instead find one that would send her north. Even though she was nowhere near strong enough to fight a Wyvern Lord, the appearance of such a powerful monster usually caused an imbalance in the monster hierarchy of a region, and made it incredibly easy for weaker adventures to come in and get some quick kills on monsters weakened from fighting each other. Despite her urge to capitalize on this opportunity, she reasoned that the Wyvern Lord wouldn’t be dying any time soon, and she’d be able to venture north when she had better gear. For now, the goblins came first. She took one last read through the quest’s description before handing it back to the receptionist.
“I’d like to take this quest.”
~~~
After midday, the rush of adventurers leaving Fioria tended to die down. Anyone trying to tackle a single day quest knew that it was best to leave in the early morning for the best chance of finishing before nightfall. And for adventurers embarking on longer expeditions, it was advised to travel with as much daylight as possible. While there might have still been some hubbub around the northern gate, Elise found the city's eastern exit to be relatively empty. There was only a short line to leave the city, and it took less than a minute for Elise’s turn to speak with the guards stationed at the gate.
“Name and occupation,” the guard stated in a monotone voice. He’d likely been saying the same thing every day for hours on end, so his lack of enthusiasm was to be expected.
“Elise Creston, adventurer,” Elise proclaimed, pointing at the badge pinned to her chest. Her face didn’t show it, but she was a little bit proud to be showing off her adventurer status. The guard took a quick glance at the badge and then nodded her through. The entire interaction took no more than five seconds, which Elise assumed was largely due to the skills required to be a guard. The city took careful notice of everyone who came and went, so the guard likely had some memory skill that let him store names without having to write them down. More importantly though, was the skill that all city guards were required to have: Detect Lies. It wasn’t a perfect skill, and got more accurate at higher ranks, but for simple questions like ‘name and occupation’, even a D rank Detect Lies would be sufficient.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Elise once again began to feel dejected. As she veered off the trade route, through the grassy plains and towards the woods where the goblins were reported, her only thoughts were on her skills, or lack thereof. Skills didn’t just make adventuring easier, they made life easier. Wanted to run without getting tired? Stamina skills could help with that. Needed to carry a heavy load? No problem when you had a C rank Lion’s Strength. Even seemingly useless skills like Smooth Wrinkles made certain chores more bearable. All Elise could do was silently curse the world as she jogged ahead.
Self pity would do her no good. She’d already gone down that line of thinking in the morning, and her meeting with the guildmaster did change her future prospects. Along with the two recipes she was meant to use to learn how skill craft worked, Leon had let her briefly look through the other skill recipes in the compendium. A number of them were skills she’d never heard of, and she wasn’t going to lie, the idea of making such powerful skills, even if she never got to use them, did sound enticing. But reading those recipes wasn’t the most interesting part of the compendium. No, what really interested her was what came after the recipes, or rather, what didn’t. A section of the page was missing, the torn edge of the paper clearly visible at the end of the long list of skill combinations. Even Leon didn’t know what it was, but he guessed it had been a secret so great that one of the previous guildmasters thought it would be dangerous to keep around. There was more to Skill Transfer than just making new skills, Elise could tell. What exactly that ‘more’ was, well that would be difficult to figure out. For now, she’d work on getting the crafting down.
And the quest. Minutes of jogging through the woods had passed by seemingly without Elise noticing, as she’d been lost in her thoughts. She refocused on her surroundings, taking a good look around to make sure she wasn’t in any immediate danger. It wasn’t likely, as she was still relatively close to the city, but one could never be too careful. Satisfied that she was safe, she took a seat on the first tree stump she could find, and began pulling items from her bag.
Firstly, the quest. She’d taken the parchment with her, since it contained the coordinates she was meant to check for goblins. Secondly, she pulled out her adventurer’s compass, checking the coordinates listed on the small device and comparing them to those on the quest. Technically, the compass wasn’t hers; the receptionist at the guild had been kind enough to lend her one for a couple days. One of the many perks of being employed by the guild, Elise figured. Unlike a normal compass with a needle that pointed north, the adventurers compass compared the magnetic field strengths of a few known landmarks, and displayed a set of numbers that relayed one’s position in the world. It was a wonderful piece of what most people referred to as ‘Skill-Tech’, powerful technology that was created in part by skills. It was also currently telling Elise that she still had nearly ten miles to go before she reached her destination.
Is it worth trying to finish the quest today? she wondered. It would take at least another hour to get to the search location, and then over an hour to return. Plus, the search radius for goblins was sizable, and it would probably take her at least two good hours of looking for the quest to count as complete. The compass would record her movements in the search area, so even if she didn’t find any goblins, covering at least 90% of the area would satisfy the quest requirements. Looking at the sun, she figured she had just under four hours of daylight left. It was technically possible to complete the quest in that time, but was it really worth it?
Of course it was. She was a Creston, through and through. Some would call her choice foolhardy, but she hadn’t spent the first couple decades of her life training for nothing. Now that she was an adventurer, it was time to work even harder. She set off towards her target, keeping her pace through the woods at a brisk jog. Between carrying her sword, her bag, and having to watch out for danger, the trip was rough, and by the five mile mark she had to stop for a quick water break. Despite the aching in her legs, she didn’t even spend a second contemplating giving up. Just as quickly as she had stopped, she began running again, with a newfound burst of energy.
She reached the search radius in just over an hour. It was a bit slower than she would have liked, partially due to the uneven terrain, but overall her pace had been satisfactory. Now finally able to rest again, she slumped against the nearest tree and began pulling out gear from her bag.
When she had accepted the quest, the receptionist had given her more than just the compass. The first thing she pulled out was a copper orb no larger than her fist. Despite its unassuming look, it was one of the most important pieces of equipment she was given. The search area had a number of rock faces filled with caves and burrows, and some had entrances too small for a human but just barely passable for a goblin. She wouldn’t be able to check those herself, so she was meant to throw the copper orb inside and leave it there. The aptly named monster-seeker would alert her if it detected any monsters by sending a message to her skill interface, and unlike the compass, it was easy to produce and therefore incredibly cheap. The guild had given her five to use, and even if she found more than five potential den locations, as long as she used all the orbs it would be enough.
The second thing she pulled from her bag was a small vial with dark blue liquid. It was a hybrid between a healing and a stamina potion, made by a member of the guild with some alchemy skills. I hopefully won’t have to use this for healing, Elise thought. As a hybrid potion, it was weaker than a dedicated healing or stamina potion, so on the healing front it wouldn’t help with anything more severe than a small cut. She was planning on using it to assist with her run back to town, since she was on a time crunch with the sun now even closer to setting.
The final item in her bag... She left it where it was. She was almost certain it would be of no use to her, but still the receptionist at the guild had insisted she take it with her. It was another piece of skill tech, one that supposedly enhanced skills for a brief period of time. Elise could see how it would be a useful emergency tool for most adventurers, but for her, it was just a sour reminder that she’d be relying solely on her training to stay alive.
The remaining contents of her bag were just basic essentials. A few bandages, a stick of jerky, and a flask of water that was now half empty. After confirming that everything was still in its place, it was time to begin the quest in earnest. Her compass showed that her current coordinates were only a few minutes away from one of the rock faces she needed to check out, so she headed off in that direction.
The first crevice she found was easy to spot. Whether or not it could actually be a goblin den though, was up for debate. It was small, only a foot across and maybe three feet tall, with no visible signs of any goblin activity nearby. Elise figured it was still worth tossing a monster-seeker, despite the incredibly low odds of it finding anything. With a quick underhand lob the copper orb went sailing into the darkness, the clunking sound of metal against rock slowly fading out of earshot.
Onto the next location, then. She only had four monster finders left now, but most of the caves in the area had entrances large enough for a human to pass through. Checking the compass, it looked like the next few rock-faces were clustered together, about a ten minute jog away. Elise took a quick sip of water before heading off, intently focused on scouring the area as efficiently as possible.
Her focus was almost immediately interrupted by a message from her skill interface suddenly obstructing her view. The message was short and direct, only three words long, and caused Elise to stop in her tracks and spin around to face the crevice she’d just checked.
Warning: Monsters Detected.
Now, she had an important choice to make. Navigating through her interface let her see more detailed information about what exactly the monster seeker had detected, which in this case was described as a ‘medium to large group of goblins’. There were no hobgoblins detected, which was both good and bad. Good, because hobgoblins could pose a threat to even adventurers with multiple A rank skills. Bad, because Elise was seriously considering engaging in combat herself.
In the end, she didn’t get to make the decision. From the crevice, the pitter patter of goblin feet began to echo louder and louder. Elise could see a set of crimson eyes peering at her from the darkness. From behind her, the underbrush began to stir, as more goblins appeared from all directions. She was surrounded.
Elise unsheathed her sword, holding it in one hand and lowering her stance. Her heart began to beat faster, not out of fear, but from excitement. All that time training with the sword, researching how to fight monsters, was finally about to pay off. Even without any skills, her confidence was unwavering.
This was going to be fun.