Walking through the streets of Cragfall on the back of an oversized owlbear was a lot more uncomfortable than Millie realized. She knew there would be stares, but she wasn't prepared for the stares. There were, surprisingly, very few insults shouted at her. Probably because people were too taken aback to form their thoughts into words.

Doing her best to not make eye contact, she made her way to the quest board. The crowd from earlier in the day had thinned, and there were only a couple of people nearby. Instead of riding her mount directly up to the board, she dismounted a few yards away and instructed both of her skelemated companions to stay back.

Hopefully, no one would give them a problem being in the middle of town, near the Adventurer's Guild, and being flagged as her minions by the System.

Once within range, Millie pulled up the quest board's interface and selected the tutorial quest. It read the same as before, only now there was a [TURN IN] button for her to press.

She did so, and her XP total raised to 950/1500. The board updated, too, with a new quest:

******

[TUTORIAL QUEST 2: FIND THE LOST SHIPMENT]

Oh, no! A shipment of grain and other supplies from Wheatopolis has not reached its destination in Cragfall. It is over a day late, and it's up to you to figure out what happened and help the supplies get delivered.

[Difficulty]

— *

[REWARD]

— XP: 250

[ACCEPT]

"Wheatopolis?" Millie said aloud, not even meaning to. "Where the heck is Wheatopolis?" She laughed, having never heard of the city.

"It's probably a fake city made up by the System for that quest," said a voice to her left. Millie whipped her head in that direction and saw Lorey, the girl who had received the epic [Runecrafter] class.

"Wait, what?" Millie asked. "It can do that?" Then realizing that she actually knew Lorey, she said, "And hi, Lorey! Congrats on [Runecrafter]! I was so happy for you when it happened."

Lorey beamed. "Thank you, Millie. It was a bit of a surprise. I wanted a tradeskill, sure, and I'd hoped for an advanced one, but I never ever thought about one like this." She took a deep breath, and Millie saw her shoulders rise and tighten a little. "It's a lot. Like…a lot to take in."

"I know the feeling," Millie said. "The whole [Death Mage] advanced class has been a bit much."

Lorey half-smiled and half-grimaced. "Better you than me on that one."

Millie laughed. "I'll take that as a compliment."

It was Lorey's turn to chuckle. "It was, actually. I know you have been wanting something like that, and I'm glad you got it. I just hope people aren't too awful to you because of it."

"Oh, they absolutely are, yeah," Millie said as she nodded emphatically. "It's my first day with it, working on the tutorial quests, even, and people are scared of me, yell at me, even tell me I'm going to suck out their life and soul just by being near them!"

Lorey's eyes widened. "You're not are you?!"

"No!" Millie said. "No way! Lorey, I would never—"

The epic enchanter burst out laughing. "I know! I'm sorry, I know, Millie. I know you wouldn't, even if you could. That's not how any of this works. I just had to see how you reacted."

Millie dropped her smile into a sardonic frown. "Yeah, thanks for that. It was hilarious."

"Look," Lorey said, "Being a necro is hard. My family was telling me last night—after you got your class and we'd all gone home—that supposedly my mom's great-uncle or something like that was given [Necromancer] as his first class."

"Oh! How cool!"

"Not for him," Lorey continued. "According to my mom, he was ran out of whatever village he was from—"

"Wheatopolis, maybe?"

"Hah! I doubt it. She didn't say where. But she said he was ran out of there and basically spent the next few years or so leveling up mostly alone and having people be generally awful to him."

"Well, that's a good pep talk. Thanks, Lorey!"

"Hold on," Lorey said. She held her hand up. "They also told me that he overcame it through a few class advancements and eventually unlocked the [Void Ascendant] class. It gave him so many bonuses and spells for healing and support that he eventually got invited to a Guild and started working his way through Exalted dungeons and the Spire."

Millie's eyes enlarged. "How far did he get? Is he still climbing?"

Lorey shook her head. "Mom said he died in the Spire when she was a young kid, but she wouldn't say how or what happened."

"Gah. Why won't people talk about the Spire?"

"To not piss off the gods?" Lorey shrugged. "Anyway, I have to get this quest done—the second tutorial quest is calling my name."

"Hey, mine, too!" Millie said. "Wanna tackle it together?"

"I'm sure yours is different. Mine's a crafting one specifically for [Enchanters]. I'll be finding, sorting, and merging different essences from crystals."

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

"Yeah, that's pretty different from my Wheatopolis grain recovery."

"It is isn't it? But hey," Lorey said, "when I get a chance to finally get the board to give me access to quests I can do with [Runecrafter] combat stuff, I'll totally knock out a quest or two with you."

"You may be the only one in town who will," Millie said, shrugging.

"Nah, surely not."

"Guess we'll see," Millie said. "Anyway, enjoy your ques,t and congrats again on the epic class. I'm so happy for you."

Lorey beamed again, her grin as bright as Millie's cloak was dark. She waved as she headed down the street.

###

Millie crested the hill, and there it was. A wagon missing two wheels that she could see lying broken a few yards away. Torn cloth was everywhere on the ground, and a few broken barrels were also scattered around.

She moved closer and dismounted, but kept the owlbear skeleton a few steps behind her as she approached the wreckage.

******

[QUEST UPDATE: FOUND THE WAGON FROM WHEATOPOLIS]

[NEW OBJECTIVE: RECOVER WHAT YOU CAN FROM THE WRECKAGE]

[BONUS OBJECTIVE: DISCOVER WHAT HAPPENED TO THE DELIVERY]

******

Millie was sure that recovering what was left would be no problem. There didn't seem to be a lot to recover from what she could see so far.

But there was a bonus objective, too, and she wasn't quite sure how to complete it. She just knew that she would have to do that before completing the main quest and turning it in.

Millie wasn't sure how she was supposed to discover what happened to the delivery, but she figured her best bet was just looking around. The cloth was the wagon's canvas top, ripped to shreds. A spatter of blood was on the ground near the driver's seat, but there was no body.

The sun was getting to be lower in the sky, making it hard for her to see to the west. After a few minutes of searching, Millie couldn't see a horse or mule or whatever beast of burden had been pulling the wagon toward Cragfall.

The thought of the animal made Millie remember what Lorey had told her. That Wheatopolis might be a city the System made up for this quest. But wouldn't that also mean the grain, the wagon, the animal pulling it, and the driver, were also made up for the quest?

How could that be possible? There was a person involved in this. Maybe more than one if it was bandits or something and not a monster attack. So how could it all be made up and generated by the System for this single tutorial quest?

Probably the same way those [Giant Rats] and their nests were. Or the [Lesser Owlbears] who lived in the Pines. No matter how many adventurers were killed, more were there not long after. They'd just appear, spawning.

But those weren't people. Those were monsters and creatures. Elements of the System itself.

Millie took a closer look at the rear of the wagon and saw that the barrels were busted and grain spilled out on the ground. Inside the wagon, a slew of ripped burlap was mixed in a veritable sea of grain.

In the whole mess, there was only a single burlap sack that was filled to the brim with hulled wheat and still sealed. Wheatopolis' Best was stamped on both sides of the bag.

As soon as she picked up the bag, another quest update popped up.

******

[QUEST UPDATE: DELIVER THE RECOVERED SUPPLIES TO ADVENTURER'S GUILD]

[BONUS OBJECTIVE: DISCOVER WHAT HAPPENED TO THE DELIVERY]

******

The bonus objective hadn't changed. Not surprising, since Millie didn't have any more of an idea as to what had happened. Figuring there had to be some clue, otherwise the System wouldn't have included the bonus objective, she started to look more closely at the details of the wagon and the surrounding terrain.

Eventually, she did discover what looked like it could be footprints or hoof prints or something leading off toward the west. It could also be her seeing what she wanted to see, and it was nothing more than wishful thinking.

Covering her eyes as much as she could to block the sun, Millie looked into the distance. There was a large rock formation off to the west, too. Mounting up and setting the bag of Wheatopolis' Best on the vertebrae behind her, Millie rode off into the sunset.

###

The rock formation was definitely the place the System wanted her to go for the bonus objective. Unfortunately, it was too late for both the mule that had been pulling the wagon, and for the man who had been driving it. Their bodies were both filled with holes, their clothes shredded, and tacky pools of dried and drying blood beneath them.

There was no grain, whether in barrels or bags, anywhere. Just the corpses.

That made Millie feel a lot better actually. If all she'd found was a destroyed wagon, spilled grain, and long-dead corpses, then that meant the System could have set this entire thing up for her quest without actually creating a whole person out of nothing. There might not have even been an attack because the whole scenario was set up like this, for her to find the single bag of wheat and these guys already dead.

Oddly, though, the bonus objective of her quest hadn't updated despite her finding what had to be the driver and the mule. It was too much of a coincidence for it not to be.

So what was she missing?

A hissing sound coming from all sides let her know exactly what she was missing. A half-dozen scorpions, each about two feet in length with an equally long stinger emerged from the sandy soil, surrounding her as she sat on her undead mount.

First, she tossed the rat skeleton toward the ground so it would get at least one or two of the scorpions' attention. At the same time, she cast [Death's Favor] and the now familiar black fire engulfed all of the arachnids surrounding them.

The scorpions wasted no time in attacking the rat, their stingers slamming down but finding their target only about half the time as the reanimated rodent scurried around, attacking anything it could see.

"Do the thing," Millie said as her spell started draining her enemies' life essence. Her mount knew precisely what she meant by that, and its massive form became a blur of slashing claws and chomping beak.

The scorpions never stood a chance. Millie got a notification she had gained a collective 300 XP for their deaths. They were worth double what the rats had been, so that was cool. After that, her bonus objective did finally update.

******

[BONUS OBJECTIVE COMPLETE: YOU FOUND OUT WHAT HAPPENED TO THE DELIVERY AND TOOK CARE OF IT]

******

Not one to give up the chance at a few new friends, Millie hopped down to the ground and knelt beside the nearest scorpion. She'd never been this close to a bug that was just barely smaller than her. All things considered, she was probably really lucky she had the owlbear. Otherwise, she'd have been in a lot of trouble with an ambush like this. Even with the rat skittering around.

Resting her hand on the scorpion's back, she started casting [Skelemate].

******

[SPELL FAILURE]

The creature you are attempting to reanimate does not possess the necessary components to complete the spell.

[MISSING]

—Skeleton

******

"Well, crappy crap crap," Millie said. "That sucks." She huffed in frustration. "What about you guys?" she asked the nearby corpses across the way, already knowing the answer.

She knelt beside the mule first. [Skelemate] failed on it, too. It had been dead too long, according to the notification. Millie hesitated before moving over toward the dead wagon driver. Should she even try? She knew the answer was going to be the same, but this was a human body. Is that the start of the slippery slope that she kept hearing about with necromancy?

No, especially not if he were simply created—as a corpse, especially—and put here for this quest. With that thought in the forefront of her mind, Millie rooted through his pockets, finding nothing. Figures.

Expecting nothing to happen, the newbie death mage placed her hands on the corpse's chest and cast [Skelemate]. Nothing happened except the same notification telling her it had been dead for too long.

Nothing else to be done but go to the Adventurer's Guild and give them a bag of wheat. On the way, maybe Millie would be able to think of a name for her elite friend with the claws and beak.