“What now?” Lucas asked. I was of the mind to keep going, but hauling the gnoll shaman around with us was out of the question. Even just a torso weighed around one-hundred pounds, which wasn’t exactly light.

We hadn’t discussed what to do once we were successful, I just knew we needed more shamans. “Let’s get it back on the cart and go again,” I said. I was just about to assign two people to bring it back when Jessica interrupted me.

“Let’s not split up. If the next pull goes poorly, we will be down members and that’s a risk we don’t need to take.”

I caught her eye and gave a nod, “Agreed.”

Lucas and Alan ended up carrying the shaman between the two of them all the way back to the cart. It wasn’t a long walk by distance, but the terrain proved annoyingly difficult to traverse quickly. I could just make out the break in the forest ahead when a horn bellowed behind us from the direction of the gnoll camp.

“That’s an alarm.” The guard warned us. No one was of the mind to question him and we picked up the pace immediately.

“Give it here.” Richard said to Alan, before hoisting the entire shaman over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Trying to maneuver while sharing the awkward burden with another person was harder than him just bearing the entire weight temporarily.

A quick sprint had us at the edge of the forest in merely a minute, and we spotted our cart in the distance. No one held anything back anymore, and the guard we came with was left in the dust, even by me.

“The gnoll shamans don’t go unnoticed,” I said. It was the only explanation I could offer for the alarm. Presumably, there were so few of them that they held a special position in their tribe. The alarm had sounded quickly though; which meant capturing more shaman in the future would be equally as difficult.

“This sucks,” Maria said. “Now what?”

“We call it a day and collect our earnings,” Lucas said before Jessica or I could answer her. “We’ll have more chances in the future.” Maria gave an unhappy hmph before running a bit faster towards the wagon.

The reins snapped and both horses let out a neigh while kicking the sky. The carriage was already turned around and ready to go before we had even arrived. This clearly wasn’t the guards’ first encounter with this gnoll behavior. And I was thankful, because gnolls had finally breached the forest edge and were running in our direction.

We surely weren’t the first to attempt to catch gnoll shamans, but maybe we were the first to get one alive. Ahead of me, Jessica reached the cart, followed by an annoyed Maria. After that it was Mark and Glenn and then Anna. Richard, Alan, and I were in the very back, and I made sure to keep watch on the guard who hadn’t managed to match our pace.

Burning any bridges right now wasn’t a good idea. The fact was that we could pull up to Rigar and be immediately arrested for contraband goods. A living gnoll shaman would probably be a death penalty.

I waited for the guard to pass me before keeping pace with him, “Are you okay?” I asked. This got a nod in return. We were the last to arrive, and the face of the guard controlling both horses was hilarious to see. It was pure shock, as Richard loaded an armless and legless living gnoll shaman like he was placing down some apples in a farmer’s cart.

“Ask… questions… later,” the panting guard who had arrived with me said, before jumping onto the front seat. “Fast! HYAH!” he yelled while whipping the reins, which got another neigh. The horses took off and kicked up a trail of dust and dirt. In just a few meters it was impossible to see the gnolls behind us.

“Out of sight, out of mind,” I said aloud.

That was easy to say, until the bumps from the wood under my ass grew so intense I could barely bear it. This cart needed more weight, which meant a whole lot of gnoll shamans. That was the goal, at least.

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“I’ll never miss this.” Anna complained, bracing herself against the shaking of the cart while trying to find a comfortable sitting position. No one disagreed.

“Let’s try and find a more suitable carriage when we return,” Lucas suggested.

“Thicker wheels provide more stability!” The guard yelled from the front. They were a bit more secure as the front part of the cart was weighted more heavily than the back. Any bump would send us a foot in the air and then we slammed back down our ass, often times we would get hit again by the cart before we even fully came down.

I constantly glanced at the gnoll shaman laying there. Its breathing was stable and there were no signs of anything untoward happening with it. As far as Richard was concerned, that was a bag of five gold right there. “That’s probably the heaviest five gold I’ll ever carry,” he laughed.

“Until we get more.” Maria reminded everyone. She was right though, this wasn’t over. We would go again tomorrow. It didn’t need to be said, it was a given.

“What should we spend the gold on?” I asked. “Besides the carriage.” There were other options besides just gaining items. Professions were extremely enticing and surely everyone wanted a profession for themselves. No doubt adding them would increase our overall power.

“The carriage will probably cost over a gold,” Lucas said. “It’s likely we’ll have three gold remaining at most. We should consider starting two or three of us on a profession.” The two professions I had seen were leather working and tailoring, and each cost a gold minimum to learn. Whether there were more expensive tiers to purchase was currently unknown.

Typically, in games, the cost to level a profession was much higher than what it took to learn. Assuming there were profession levels that required more training, we could be in for dozens of gold per person. The number of shamans we needed to catch suddenly became unfathomable. The gnoll shaman bouncing around with us started to look a lot less valuable than it actually was.

“I hope granny still has that necklace,” Maria said aloud. “That’s been in my dreams every night since I saw it.” I could see Mark and Glen exchange looks, like they wanted to laugh, but her deadpan expression told us all she wasn’t joking.

“Leatherworking appeals to me,” Lucas said. “If we can afford it, I may even be the first person in this new world to ever learn it.” No explanation from him was needed. He needed to wear lightweight and easy to move in armor to maximize his potential.

“I’d like to have tailoring, and maybe spend a little money tasting some of this world’s cuisine,” Anna said. “I know what you’re thinking…, that it’s selfish of me to suggest it. But maybe with tailoring I could make clothes that earn back the money.” I was actually impressed because Anna wasn’t someone familiar with games, and then she came up with a good argument as to why my initial thought was correct: professions were likely to be better value for us than items.

Casters usually wore cloth because their stats specialized in non-physical traits. Carrying around plate or even leather would hinder them greatly. They were squishy, low health classes. Standing still for a cast was fine, but being able to move swiftly and easily was important when a single hit could be your death.

I thought about what profession I wanted, and realized that my case was a tad special. While somewhat of a caster, I had an army of undead at my beck and call, and the majority of my spells were related to them.

Besides channeling Decay, I didn’t need to stand still for any other reason. My undead troops also meant I didn’t exactly need to move that much either. In the off-chance Alex or Richard let a mob through, my warrirors could act as tanks in their place.

I wasn’t nearly as fragile as Anna, and my limited number of spells meant as long as my minions were alive, my MP expenditure was low. That freed up a lot of stats to go into strength. Would that qualify me to wear plate armor?

I thought back to the secret shop and regretted greatly not taking Drain Life. The potential it had now would be huge. With bone armor, full-plate armor, and my army of undead to bolster my attack and defense, I could fight on almost endlessly.

Small attacks would barely scratch the surface of bone armor, and big attacks would be avoided when possible, and then Drain Life would sustain me back up when I did take damage. This was all hypothetical of course, but the possibility was there.

“What about you Mike?” Jessica suddenly asked. It seemed in my daydreaming I was the only one who hadn’t voiced an opinion on what they wanted. Even now I wasn’t sure, but I thought a profession was the best investment in our future. “A profession or new skill.”

There was a lot of unknowns still, and until I was better informed I couldn’t make a good decision. What if only one profession was learnable? What if there were professions so out there I’d never even dreamed or imagined they could exist?

I’d never anticipated that the class Glenn got – Apocalypse Architect – would even exist, and that was a perfect example. The possibilities that could harm or benefit us in the future were really endless. I doubted the beings toying with us started on Earth. How many hundreds of planets across the stars had fallen to a fate like this?

Surviving was the most important thing, and unless I was forced to make a decision haphazardly, I wanted to make the right one. Every face around me had a smile on it. Morale was at an all-time high as we daydreamed about making some progress.

“Another minute or so,” the guard at the front said. By now we could see the walls of Rigar appear over the hill we were cresting. This was only my second time seeing it from the outside, and it was just as magnificent as the first.