The status given to us by the gods generally shows our name, our race, our age, and our skills separated by type. However, records remain from ancient times that refer to a different status, recording one’s physical and mental abilities and growing in power through the killing of others.
Many theories abound as to why the gods chose to alter the status system to the current design, but the theory that has gained the most traction is that the old civilization destroyed itself in an obsession over gaining power. Proof of this lies in the few ancient beings unearthed from the civilization’s ruins, as they inevitably try to kill the largest number of lifeforms they can in as short a time as possible.
We come to the question of why the current system was put in place. Our current system give us power for each skill level we gain, and it is technically possible to fully master combat skills to 10 without killing others. It is in this fact that many scholars find a grain of the gods’ intentions, that the gods desired to limit the amount of conflict in the world, for reasons beyond our understanding.
However, another theory has been gaining traction in recent years, that the leveling system that existed previously made the field too uneven, thus making conflicts boring. This is supported by the fact that the Chaos Pantheon is known for deliberately empowering individuals with a nature opposed to the powerful in a given region to make conflicts ‘more interesting’. The fact that, historically, the Heroes selected by the Light Pantheon are always exact equivalents to the Dark Lords created by the Dark Pantheon further reinforces this theory, as the Light Pantheon far out-matches their counterparts in power.
In addition…
Excerpt from Postulations on the Nature of Status and its History by the Great Sage, Lag’arendos
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I awoke the next morning with Ris practically wrapped around me like plastic on a candy bar. For some reason, after we escaped from the mercenaries, she seemed to have lost her hesitation about being near me. The expression on her sleeping face was completely at ease, a slight smile curving her lips.
Ris was a beautiful woman, even by the standards of spirit foxes, which were higher than other races. The stark white remnants of knife cuts were visible against her somewhat darker skin color, and I knew some men and women would view them with disgust. However, to me they only enhanced her beauty. If I wasn’t so young, looking at her this closely would probably have been enough to make my libido rage out of control.
The dark elf sisters were grinning as they looked at us from the other side of the banked fire. They seemed to enjoy the sight of Ris sticking to me like glue, for some reason.
Not for the first time, I found myself admiring their blue-tinged silver hair, which still retained its luster, despite the rather awful conditions we had to deal with.
“Brother, we’ll be happy to indulge you when you get a bit older, but you should focus on Ris, for now,” One of the sisters said, looking amused at my fascination. Despite their youth, both of them had an air of sensuality that made them difficult to ignore, even for a ten-year-old who had no libido to speak of.
“Gaveria is an oni supremacist country. Are you sure it is a good idea to head there?” The other sister said concernedly.
She wasn’t wrong to be worried. From what I understood, the nobility and military class of Gaveria was exclusively made up of pureblood oni, with a third of the population being human slaves and the rest being a melting pot of elves, oni, dwarves, mystics, and werewolves. Spirit foxes were relatively rare there, mostly because the clans had fled to the south before the kingdom’s foundation. It was inevitable that we would stand out there.
Yes, I’d learned to my surprise that humans actually existed on this world Tajiri was reborn into. However, they were a slave race, due to events that had occurred during the era of the Lost Civilization and their extremely short lifespans. While there were countries where humans lived relatively normal lives, they were still slaves. There simply hadn’t been any humans in the region I was born in, so nobody bothered explaining that to me.
“As long as we just pass through, it shouldn’t be a problem. If it becomes a problem… well, we’ll have to cross that bridge when we come to it,” I replied with a shrug, smiling bitterly. Gevaria really was the only option, given our current position and the likely fallout from the destruction of Diandra’s company.
“We’ll go along with whatever you and Ris decide. I was just letting you know our thoughts,” She explained, and I realized she trusted me enough to speak her mind, which was undeniably pleasant.
A few minutes later, Ris began to stir, blinking her eyes sleepily as she looked around the camp with a vague expression on her face, a little bit of drool oozing out of the right corner of her mouth. Her ears flicked twice, and she woke up completely a moment later, turning to stare up at me with surprise and shock. She flushed and buried her face in her hands, her tail lashing back and forth in embarrassment.
I was a gentleman, so I bravely chose not to tease her about the way she clung to me as we slept.
We proceeded quickly once we were on the road again, Ris conversing with the sisters as I concentrated on navigating the potholed and rutted dirt road. I frowned as I saw a group of goblins standing before us, several of them carrying bows or staffs, with those in front using crude stone-tipped spears.
“Girls, I’m going to blast through them,” I said, forcing my mana, qi, and spiritual energy into the motorcycle. The motorcycle began to glow with a blue light with black specks, translucent blades emerging from the front and sides.
I began to laugh madly as the glee Tajiri would have felt at this situation infected my mind. I accelerated the motorcycle, the aura around it intensifying… and a moment later we hit the front line.
The spear-wielding goblins were ripped apart into chunks of raw meat, spraying around us as we plunged through their lines. While no blood touched our skins, it somehow managed to coat every inch of the motorcycle’s surface without staining us at all.
We hit the mages and archers a moment later, the spark of fireballs and the flight of arrows turned aside by the aura, and the back line joined the front as chunks of unidentifiable meat.
My laughter faded as we continued on, and I quickly sobered. That had felt more like pure Tajiri than me. Tajiri loved crazy, dangerous situations in his previous life, but I hadn’t thought he’d passed it on to me to this extent.
“Iryun… what was that?” Ris asked quietly. I could sense from the tone of her voice that she was concerned.
“A… side-effect of the skill, probably,” I said reluctantly. I gained a sudden knowledge of how the motorcycle would grow stronger and understanding hit me like a brick wall.
The motorcycle fed on the blood and death of those it killed, transforming their souls and life force into the impetus it needed to ascend to the next level of its inanimate existence. I understood then that the artifact was linked to every aspect of my being, mind, spirit, and flesh. Killing using the motorcycle’s abilities would enhance me as well, to a greater degree than any of my other skills. It also needed artifacts to be fed to it to accommodate its growth, though.
I also instinctively understood that the exhilaration I’d felt came from the motorcycle communicating its need to my soul, its eagerness blending with the remnants of Tajiri to fill me with battle lust.
As we traveled towards Gaveria, I worried about what the future had in store for me.
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My worries were justified, though I didn’t know it at the time.
The trickster god who sometimes passed himself off as an old man sat on a throne made of stone that shifted colors constantly, confusing the eyes and warping the minds of those who looked at it too closely. He was no longer wearing his previous appearance but instead looked like a young and unbelievably handsome spirit fox with golden fur and nine tails.
The malevolence in the pitch black pools that were his eyes was no longer hidden as he observed matters in the lower realm. He smiled a bit at the replay of Diandra’s death, taking joy in the man turning into a monster that wreaked havoc on the spirits of hundreds, tainting them with Chaos without anyone recognizing it.
Iryun’s escape was more troubling. He had expected that Iryun would be caught and sold after the battle, to suffer the fate of a true slave for a few years to properly mold his mind and spirit to the god’s liking. As it was, the fusion of the two souls had not created the madness he expected, primarily because Tajiri had chosen to submit rather than fight the melding of their spirits.
His true name was Kavaiak, God of Mischief and the second most powerful deity in the Chaos Pantheon. While his words to Tajiri before his reincarnation were true, the fact was that the god had intentionally created a situation where the accident that killed the young man was likely to happen. To the god, it was like rolling dice to see who would become his toy.
Despite matters having gone completely off the rails, the god was pleased. The boy’s soul had become colder, more callous as a result of his experiences as a probationer mercenary. His willingness to sacrifice the elf child for his own survival spoke for itself.
However, it wasn’t enough. A few more years under Diandra would have caused Iryun to revel in death and destruction to the same degree as the lieutenants. The young reincarnator had an inherently predatory side that partially came from his body’s instincts and partially from Tajiri’s thrill-seeking nature. All the god had to do was draw that nature out, and his toy would increase greatly in value.
He considered arranging a tragic fate for his toy and his companions, but, after calculating the amount of Intervention Points he had stocked, he decided it wasn’t worth the cost. There would be better opportunities later to break the boy to his role.
Still, though Diandra’s death was greatly amusing and the infected will cause a delightful amount of chaos, it was a bit of a waste to lose that particular pawn so early. His talent for infecting others with Chaos was useful, Kavaiak thought.
He’d given Diandra power so that the man would train his other toys, breaking their minds and corrupting their spirits until they happily inflicted chaos on the world around them. The man had succeeded every time, releasing dozens of monsters into the world who inflicted horrors and broke the stagnation of peace and order wherever they went.
It was also convenient, since most people assumed the toys were servants of the Dark, given their destructive tendencies. Because of that, people didn’t bother to check for signs of Chaos, despite the disruption of their lives that followed.
Still, I had to pay over one hundred thousand pure souls to the Maker of Earth for this one toy… he is a costly one. Thankfully, his growth skill ensures he will be around a great deal longer than he thinks, so I will get a great deal of use out of him in the future, Kavaiak concluded, deciding not to rush things too much.
However, the boy settling down in an orderly place like Gaveria wouldn’t do, so he would have to arrange a few incidents to ‘encourage’ him to keep moving to somewhere more interesting.
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Redes Orga, the Lord of the Vermillion Night snarled in rage as he felt one of his children being tainted with Chaos. As the patron god of mystics, he was a member of the Gray Pantheon, the technically ‘neutral’ gods who ignored the bindings of alignment to pursue their own interests and preserve their independence.
The mystics were his pride and joy, born of his blood, powerful and beautiful predators that no other race could stand against. Sensing even one being touched by filthy Chaos was unbearably humiliating!
“Reyr, my daughter… seek out one of my priests and have him cleanse you of the taint!” He ordered his child harshly. It cost him a few Intervention Points, but it was an amount that would be restored within a week or so.
“Now which of the mad ones dared to touch one of my children… it can’t be Madness, he doesn’t have the presence of mind left to arrange anything like this. Conflict might be so daring, but I doubt Change would bother. He considers my children to be worthless for his purposes… that just leaves Mischief…” His crimson eyes flared as he (correctly) concluded that one of his oldest enemies had once again spat in his face.
“Mischief… you bastard, I’ll have to see what your plans are first, but I’ll make you pay for interfering with my children!” He snarled, the curling golden horns on his head flaring with blue flames in response to his rage.
He called out to his vassals and children across the world and told them to search for creatures who look to be toys of Mischief, informing them of Mischief’s preferred methodology and the likely signs that would point to such an individual. The cost in Intervention Points was high, but he considered it to be worth it.
His eyes burned with vermillion flames as he sat back on his ruby throne to await the results of the search.
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I awoke to an unfamiliar ceiling. It was made of wood polished to a rich dark gold finish, and when I pushed myself into a sitting position, I noted that the walls were made of a similar material. I searched my memories for the reason why we were indoors, and I recalled that we had found an abandoned inn on a side-road.
Ris was in another room with the twins, so I had slept alone for the first time in eight months.
I pulled a seashell comb out of my inventory and began grooming my tail and ears, the negative thoughts and fears about what was to come falling away as I indulged in the simple pleasure of making myself look decent. There was a pleasure in grooming my tail that is impossible to explain to someone who doesn’t have one. It is like the tail is another you that deserves attention and will wilt on the vine if it doesn’t receive it.
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My ears had a similar feeling. Tajiri was not a vain man, and Iryun was too innocent to care much about his appearance, but the synergy of their natures had left me overly fond of my own 'extras', though I rarely had time to indulge this particular flaw.
I looked in the smudged bronze mirror on the night table and saw that the fur on my head had regained some of its luster, the black once again as glossy as a raven’s wing and the silver shining like a newly-polished coin.
That was the hidden effect of the looted comb. It had the ability to restore the health of the fur or hair it was used to comb. It was a petty magic item, but it was also perfect for a particularly vain fox that spent too much time camping in the wilderness between towns.
I emerged from the room to see Ris sleeping outside the door, looking lonely as she huddled under a stolen quilt. I sighed and picked her up, putting one hand under her rear and the other behind her back, and I carried her to the bed, tucking her in.
It was still dark outside. I had woken up ridiculously early, as usual, so I went outside to train my sage arts.
The inn’s yard was overgrown from months of neglect, but I cared little for that as I sat on the porch and extended my spiritual energy and consciousness out in all directions. I was seeking to expand the maximum range of my sensory sage art, even if it was only by a centimeter at a time.
This was an exercise taught me by my mother for strengthening one’s spiritual energy and sage arts, as it forced the individual’s mind and spirit to expand, also having a positive influence on the use of magic. I sat there for over two hours, passively sensing everything within my sphere of influence without actively noticing it. In this state, my mind and spirit were at peace, so I had little compulsion to stop once I started.
One of the peculiarities of sage arts was that, if properly utilized, they could be used efficiently over long periods of time without expending the energy of the user. This was because they made use of natural energies to enhance and restore that of the user. It made many sage arts more efficient than magic or qi, but in exchange, they required the ability to endure spreading one’s spirit thinly across a wide area.
Most sage arts had no offensive ability, as focusing spiritual energy on a single point was incredibly difficult, making it more efficient to use magic or qi for the purposes of attacking. For this reason, fighters often neglected the sage arts until very late in their development.
However, at the highest ranks of sage arts, there were terrible curses, the ability to control the weather, and even the power to call the earth itself against one’s enemies across wide areas of the world. For this reason, the few Masters who had truly mastered sage arts were considered to be the most dangerous beings in the world, capable of taking on armies without moving a muscle.
I, of course, was nowhere near that level. I only knew five sage arts (compared to the dozens of magic spells I’d learned): Sensory Dome, Mist Field, Control Field, Will Projection, and Empathetic Cloud. The first two I was taught before we left the lands of my father’s clan, but the latter three were ones my mother had taught me after.
Will Projection allowed one to project their emotions across a wide area. It was useful when one wanted to intimidate an enemy or calm those around them. Empathetic Cloud allowed the user to sense the emotions of those around them, and it was often used by diplomats to gain an advantage at the negotiation table and by spirit doctors to determine what their patients’ problems were.
Control Field was... a utility ability. It was meant to be combined with spellcraft or vital energy to create specific effects.
Finding books describing magic was easy enough, but I had yet to find any books that explained sage arts beyond the most basic levels. Qigong techniques were also easy to find, though the quality of such techniques often varied greatly. So far, I had yet to find any techniques that were more effective than the five forms my grandfather had instructed me in, which told me just how wealthy in knowledge my two homelands had been.
Once I was done practicing sage arts, I shifted to qigong, flowing through the kata of Blue Wind, Red Flower, Green Soil, and White Water fluidly before moving to the last form, Shadow’s Blade. Each of these forms served to further widen my qi channels and increase the amount of vital energy flowing through my body bit by bit, while at the same time allowing me access to five different elemental powers. I was taken before I could learn the final, sixth form, so I often worried I wasn’t developing properly.
Thankfully, I could sense that my qi was purer and denser than others at my stage of development, so I was assured I still had some advantage, at least over the people in this area of the world. That didn’t mean that I would measure up against those from my mother’s homeland, though…
One thing I had noticed about the region as I fought my battles under Diandra was that there were far more mixed blood children in this part of the world, for some reason. In the village I was born in, I was the only mixed blood child, and the same could be said for the city-state my grandfather lived in. In addition, there was no dominant race. Some nobles were elves, others were foxes, others werewolves, and there were even a few mystic nobles.
It was odd, since my studies of the history books had stated that, while racial nations had vanished during the Dark Times due to the need to huddle together for survival, there was usually a single race that dominated the aristocracy of any given region. Gaveria was a classic example of this, with oni dominating all positions of importance.
I frowned as I caught the scent of goblin on the wind, that unique combination of sweat, feces, and dried blood that made them so unpopular with adventurers. I turned in the direction the wind was coming from and used my sensory sage arts, catching their presence within the invisible dome of spiritual energy.
Seventeen common goblins, four hob-goblins, one ogre… and they are heading straight for us, I thought with a grimace. I could easily handle the common goblins without even using magic, but adding the hobgoblins (who could probably use qigong to some extent) and the ogre (whose vital energy was so inherently strong that damaging it was ridiculously hard for its rank in the Monster Encyclopedia) would make things impossible for just me.
Even if Ris and the other two joined me… the ogre made things impossible. None of us wielded a weapon capable of dealing a mortal wound on such a creature, and I doubted my fourth-tier magic would have enough force to kill it without draining myself dry of my refined mana.
Ris was pretty good with all three powers, and the sisters were both fairly advanced in the use of sage arts, if I recalled correctly. However, Ris was at the same level or lower than I was, and I had already determined that fourth-tier magic was insufficient.
I ran into the inn and hurriedly informed the bleary-eyed elves sitting in the bar area, sipping sour wine left behind when the owners fled. Their eyes cleared pretty quickly when they heard what was heading our way, and I headed for my own room, where I’d left Ris.
When I opened the door, Ris was curled up under the covers, her eyes firmly closed. Normally, I would have taken the opportunity to observe her adorable sleeping face, but this time, I ripped the covers off the bed and shook her shoulder.
“Ris, wake up! Enemies!” I told her urgently.
Her eyes snapped open, and she shot up from the bed suddenly, nearly knocking me back a few steps with the force of her movement.
“What kind of enemies?”
“Goblins, hobgoblins, and an ogre. The ogre feels like it’s a mutant type. Its vital energy is even higher than a normal one,” I explained quickly.
“We run then,” She stated, confirming.
I nodded, “We run. With my skill, we won’t have any problems getting away from them.”
“Those two are going to hate giving up on the wine and sour beer,” She said with some amusement.
“I’ll plop a few barrels of each into my storage. They can get drunk the next time we find a safe place to stay a few days,” I said, hurrying downstairs with Ris on my heels.
The older sister poked her head into the stairwell and yelled, “They’re about two hundred meters out! Hurry!”
When she saw us, she accentuated her words with hand motions, fear in her eyes. Her sage arts had probably detected the ogre’s strength accurately enough to tell her how impossible it was.
I ran down the stairs and headed for the cellar, quickly stuffing two barrels of the best beer remaining and three of the sour wine the twins loved into my storage before running back up the stairs and outside, summoning my motorcycle with a thought and a surge of all three energies.
We quickly got on, and I started the motorcycle just as the first of the goblins came out of the trees. Ris fired a third-tier fireblast into their midst, incinerating one and blasting two others off their feet.
“Get us out of here, Iryun!” The elf sisters said in unison.
I grimaced at the fear in their voices, but I turned the motorcycle toward the road without complaint, starting us speeding away from our enemies.
To my surprise, nine hobgoblins were waiting for us at the main road, riding wolves. I swerved aside to avoid them and Ris and the sisters unloaded a half-dozen second-tier attack spells into their faces as we passed. I hadn’t had time to use the motorcycle’s defenses.
The hobgoblins rode after us, firing shortbows and green bolts of magic at us from behind, with Ris and the other two matching them with magic missiles, the second-tier spell with the highest range.
I couldn’t afford to try to help attack, but I cast a dampener shield (a third-tier spell) around the girls, which would hopefully kill any remaining inertia from the hobgoblins’ arrows and spells before they could receive an injury. The spell was anchored to the motorcycle, so it was able to go along with us.
Surprisingly, we weren’t able to leave them behind. Part of that was my body didn’t yet have a sufficient output of the three energies necessary to keep the motorcycle moving to go beyond thirty miles per hour. Another part was that the hobgoblin shaman at the rear was casting and recasting haste spells to help them keep up.
One of the hobgoblins was ripped out of his saddle by three magic missiles, but his wolf accelerated the moment it was free of the ugly creature’s weight, slavering as its instincts drove it to continue the hunt.
“Ris, try to hit the wolves. They might actually catch up with us,” I said more calmly than I was feeling as I wove past a massive pothole in the road.
“Not a bad idea, but at this range, I don’t have anything that can kill one of those things,” She growled out as she fired magic missile after magic missile.
At our level of power, magic missiles were equivalent to a dropkick from an average-sized man in power. They were sufficient to knock a hobgoblin out of the saddle, but dealing lethal damage was unlikely.
I sighed and pulled a small red gemstone out of my storage, one of my trump cards for times like this. I couldn’t afford to close my eyes or stare at the gemstone, so instead I began mumbling the dozens of equations necessary for the spell I wanted to cast as an aid.
The gemstone began to burn with a faint yellow flame, which quickly began to burn orange, then blue. The spell I was casting was at the very limit of the fourth tier, and if I tried to cast it without a catalyst, it would be fifth tier. Fortunately, I’d kept all the gemstones I looted, instead of selling them or turning them in to the quartermaster.
After a minute, the gemstone began to pulse, and I waited until the pulsations hit their peak before tossing the gem into the air so it would fall behind me. A moment later, a burst of heat and the roar of intense flames hit my eardrums like a hammer, and I couldn’t help but wince.
In the rearview mirror, I could see a ten-foot tall wall of blue flames erupt in front of the hobgoblins. Before they could stop their momentum, the first three hit the wall… and were turned to ash in an instant. The amount of mana I’d pulled into the gem from the world around us had empowered the spell further than the other times I’d tested it.
The loose wolf came close enough for a more powerful attack and took three spark bolts to the head a moment later, killing it instantly, its body rolling repeatedly due to the inertia it had at the moment it was killed.
I was fairly sure I came close to botching that spell… it shouldn’t have been that intense, so I must have screwed up one of the equations.
While the fire wall was in place, we sped ahead as fast as we could, trying to put distance between us and our monstrous pursuers.
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I kept the motorcycle going until we reached the pass… to be specific, the ruined fortress at its base. The fortress had once been the gateway between Gaveria and the now-defunct Kingdom of Ruu, but an ancient dragon took up residence in a nearby mountain and destroyed the fortress in a single night, raining fire breath and meteor spells on it until the few survivors fled.
The fortress itself was mostly rubble, but we were able to find an intact well to drink from, and one of the gatehouses was still mostly intact and in no danger of collapsing. We bedded down there, lighting a fire in the dusty fireplace.
Ris and the sisters spooned rice gruel with chunks of carrots and potatoes from the wooden bowls in their laps, quietly filling their stomachs. Ris’s ears were flat against her head, and her tail twitched occasionally in agitation. The way the goblins had pursued us after we broke their roadblock, then brought in actual wolf cavalry made us all nervous.
Goblins aren’t supposed to be that persistent. Usually, the green-skinned creatures attacked anything nearby, but they didn’t have the patience to search for a specific enemy. While hobgoblins had near-human intelligence, their lesser cousins generally only had the intelligence of a three-year-old.
However, the degree to which the creatures were organized told us there was likely a ‘king’ type that had evolved in their midst. Goblin Kings were an evolved form of hobgoblin that was rarely born amongst normal goblins. They were as intelligent as a human and as large as an ogre, with a natural aura that commanded their lesser cousins to absolute obedience.
The worst part was that a Goblin King gained knowledge from those whose brains it ate. Considering how disordered the lands were, it was likely this king had devoured at least a few soldiers, possibly a noble or two. That would have given it knowledge of basic tactics, which it could then apply to its servants.
Ruu was likely going to suffer greatly in the years to come if someone didn’t kill it, but in the short term, we had to worry about whether the creatures would continue to pursue us through the pass.
“Let’s report it to the nearest guild on the other side of the mountains. At the very least, they will want to know of the possibility of a goblin horde rising in this region,” I concluded, drawing nods from the other three. Now all that was left to worry about was whether they continued to chase us, as well as whether we could get over the pass before they caught us if they were.
“How many days worth of food do you have left in your storage, given our current rate of consumption?” The older of the elf twins asked me. I still didn’t know their names, mostly because they refused to tell me for some reason.
“Two weeks to sixteen days. Most of what is left is hard bread, a few pouches of dried fruit, and half a barrel of salt pork. If we make soup instead of eating it as is, maybe eighteen days,” I replied after examining the mental picture of my inventory that came up whenever I activated the skill.
“Enough to get over the pass, but if a blizzard hits while we are in there, things will change for the worse,” Ris said, grimacing worriedly.
“We don’t have any choice. The motorcycle can’t make it over the rockfalls in the pass, and there are points that are too narrow for it, even if the road was still being maintained,” The younger elf sister concluded.
Going through on foot was going to be exhausting, and it would only get worse if a blizzard hit. I had furs, quilts and blankets I’d stolen from the inn filling my inventory, but starting a fire was unlikely to be an option due to the lack of trees and other foliage in the area. I hadn’t thought to gather firewood into my inventory, unfortunately.
“Regardless of what else happens, we are going to be nearly out of food when we arrive in Gaveria, and I have no idea of what the local prices are for food and other supplies,” I admitted.
After looting a number of abandoned villages and inns along the way, I’d managed to gather another eight silver coins, twenty-five coppers, and one hundred twenty bronze bits. If I went by the prices in the towns we’d passed through as mercenaries (without raiding), three coppers was enough to get you a room at a low-quality inn, and a single copper would get you a meal there. Five bronze bits would get you a loaf of bread, and five coppers would get you a decent mug of ale.
Even with all the small valuables and coins I’d built up in my storage over the last eight months, it wasn’t enough to get through Gaveria without running out.
“We’ll have to register with the Adventurers Guild, then. If we work low-level requests for a few weeks, we should be able to gather enough coin to move on,” Ris reasoned. The Adventurers Guild existed in every civilized region, and there were always requests for hunting monsters and retrieving reagents from wild areas. Not to mention bodyguard jobs and the occasional bounty hunting.
One would think it would overlap with the Mercenaries Guild, but that particular guild only existed in a few regions of the world. Moreover, it was poorly organized and there was little oversight. More mercenaries existed outside its aegis than inside, so it had never really gotten off of its feet in most of the world.
The problem with the Adventurers Guild was that, once registered, it became easy for the Guild to track you by the spiritual signature attached to your license. Many suspicious souls found that disturbing, though that didn’t stop people from joining anyway.
“The other issue is avoiding the attention of the military noble caste…” The older elf twin said worriedly.
It was an issue. Gaveria’s military noble caste was infamous for how they went after beautiful boys and girls of other races. While it wasn’t true of all, there was certainly a strong minority that had those tastes.
The elf twins were both great beauties, the fact that they were almost identical making their appearance all the more alluring. Their bodies were also mature for their age (at fourteen, elves usually didn’t have much in the way of curves), so they would attract attention even if they covered their faces. I would attract those who preferred pretty young boys, of which there was a grand selection from both genders.
Gaveria was a country where law meant less than caste, so it was all too likely that no one would be able to protect us if someone like that set their eyes on us.
Ris came over to me and I pulled the furs covering my body aside so she could join me. This had practically become a ritual for us at this point, as she curled herself around me and I covered us with the furs before lying down and closing my eyes.
The sisters would wake me up when it was my time to stand watch. For now, I chose to just enjoy Ris’s soft warmth clinging to my side as I fell into a deep sleep.