"So..." Talia said. "...Come here often?"

"No, I've never been here before in my life," I said, eyes forward, because I was driving.

This morning, at first light- Talia and Faith were not happy about waking up that early- I'd finished loading all my shit into my room, along with Talia's since her house was maybe two hundred feet away, and then headed out to pick up Faith and then Emily, loading their trunks into their rooms.

An hour later, the sun had fully risen, and I was very grateful I had the adjustable sun-shades to keep the low morning sun out of my eyes. Back in the 'portable house' half of the van, Emily and Faith were both up in their rooms, having immediately gone back to sleep. Talia, however, had recently woken back up and come down to the driver's cabin to be with me.

"...You bored?" Talia asked.

"Yeah, more than a little," I said, sighing. "I swear, driving this thing is the worst mix of boring and 'needs constant attention.' Fuck me running... And I signed up for four days of this!"

"You do know you can pull over, take a few minutes to recover, and then get going again, right?" Volex pointed out, as she slipped out of her reliquary. Considering how freely she could enter and exit that thing, I counted myself very lucky that she was reasonable and friendly; a more typical demon on a defective leash would've tried to maul me by now. "I've seen the schedule too, and if you stop for a ten minute break every hour or so, that'll only eat up an extra hour and a half per day- an hour and a half out of a time block that you designated as 'non-essential, use for whatever.'"

"...Point taken," I said. "Alright, well, this road has stone walls on both sides to keep livestock in, so I'll wait until we get to somewhere I can pull off the road and get myself a drink."

"Have you eaten breakfast yet?" Talia asked.

"I ate a travel ration bar this morning, but..." I grimaced. "...Well, I think I got the recipe wrong, because that thing was not as filling as it should've been. Or maybe I just got the portions wrong- I'm not sure. It didn't taste great, and I didn't account for it in our actual travel rations, I just figured I'd want something extra that I could eat quickly, and-"

"How's scrambled eggs sound?" Talia asked.

"Can I get some toast with that too?"

"Sure."

Talia got out of her seat, and ambled back into the living space.

"Volex, can you go with her, and maybe offer to cook for her?" I asked, once the door had shut.

"She's that bad, huh?" Volex asked, smirking.

"As a Druid, Talia does understand that humanoids are naturally evolved to eat and digest cooked foods," I said. "She is, however, not very good at cooking, because something about the process just disagrees with her brain. As it stands, I was prepared to do all the cooking on this trip, because I am good at cooking and I like doing it, but..."

"Got it," Volex said, nodding. "Well, as it so happens, Terpsichore asked me to cook for her a lot, back in the day, so I'd say I'm pretty good at it." She grunted. "Of course, I did learn all the ingredient names in High Elven, so I might need someone to translate the labels on the spice bottles, but..."

"Oh, I already relabeled all those," I said breezily. "I know it doesn't matter that much to humans, but as an elf, it just sets my teeth on edge to see things written in anything besides High Elven. How can you expect anyone to be able to read that in two hundred years' time? But, at the same time..."

"It's a mass-produced spice bottle," Volex finished. "It's a disposable piece of ephemera. It's barely meant to last more than two years, let alone be legible in two hundred. Anyhow, I'll go interrupt Talia before she does any more damage."

She left the driver's cabin with a swishing of fabric and the clicking of her heels against the textured metal floor of the cabin, leaving me alone in the cabin once again.

"Four days of this," I said quietly, staring ahead at the wide open landscape of grassy plains and various farm animals, without even a hint of the village we should be coming up on visible on the horizon. "Four fucking days of this."

I huffed miserably. I wonder if I could teach one of the others how to drive this thing...

---

At around eleven in the morning, we arrived in a town called Sandsdale, named after the sandy little gully that a stream flowed through, even in the summer. I checked my map, and after a few moments of muttering to myself to figure out just where the hell we were, I carefully navigated my van through the town's poorly-cobbled streets until I arrived at our first real rest stop: the Sandsdale Traveller's Inn.

Alongside the Gods of Mages, Paladins, Thieves, and other high-prestige Hikaano professions, there was the God of Innkeepers, of all fucking things. The Innkeeper's Guild wasn't just a professional organization of innkeepers, hotel owners, and restauranteurs, it also employed a number of cartographers and copywriters, and operated a publishing house that regularly produced high quality maps, travel guides, and almanacs for the typical traveller.

This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Adventurers were, of course, a major source of income for the Innkeepers, but that didn't mean that prices at a Guild Tavern were outrageously high- while the food was a little more expensive than what you could get from a street vendor, it was still totally possible for two people to walk in with a dollar between them and walk out with full bellies.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I must've misheard you."

"It's twenty dollars to park here for an hour, and a hundred for a full day," the valet repeated.

The operative word in that assertion was walk in. See, Adventurers and aristocrats were the only people who traveled through town in vehicles, and those needed to go somewhere when they weren't moving. So, in order to milk this wealthy clientele for all they were worth, the Innkeeper's Guild absolutely gouged you on parking fees.

This wasn't the only reason I wanted to take the train, or even the main one, but the fact that twenty dollars would've bought a ticket straight to Mount Fate that included meals was definitely one of them.

"...Alright," I muttered, reaching into a pocket and pulling out a twenty-dollar bill. "Here."

The valet took the bill, and then tore off a ticket from the end of a reel, before tearing it in half and pocketing one of the halves. "You'll have to show this at your departure, sir. Don't lose it."

"Thanks," I said, instead of yelling at the guy who literally just works here, and probably wouldn't get paid even ten percent of that bill for today's work. It wasn't like he set the prices, after all. "Where do I park it?"

"Right in this marked spot, sir. Carefully, now."

---

"That's highway robbery!" Faith nearly yelled.

"Please don't yell inside this very lovely tavern," I said, my voice raised a little. I then quieted back down to a normal inside voice. "Look, we're Adventurers now, and what that means is that everyone expects us to be rich assholes, and nobody is going to feel bad about milking us for everything we're worth. Because as far as the common man is concerned, Adventurers already stole and looted all that money. So, no, we are not going to start a fight or cause a scene because the Innkeeper's Guild, a business which has to make money to pay its employees and suppliers, has decided to charge wealthy patrons a premium for services that are legitimately expensive."

"Legitimately expensive?" Faith asked, her low volume belying her simmering anger. "Joseph, it is an empty plot of land where you park caravans for an hour. How exactly is that expensive?"

"That's an empty plot of land that could have been used to build a house, plant a garden, or do all sorts of other productive things," I said. "Inside the town's perimeter walls, where it's so conveniently close-by. And instead of any of those productive uses, it had to be used for parking. The money you'd gain from turning that into a house or a food garden is, conversely, the money you lose by not turning it into a house or a food garden."

"Well said, young man!" someone said from behind me, prompting me to turn around.

Walking up to us was a well-dressed middle-aged man with wrinkles around his eyes and mouth, and a brightly gleaming set of teeth inside that mouth. His skin was a light-medium brown, the sort that left you unsure of whether it was a tan from working outside, or just what he naturally looked like. His hair was shiny black and curly, with dots of salt beginning to poke through the pepper, especially in his goatee.

"Yes, indeed," the man continued, coming to a stop at the end of our table. "The economic principle of which this young man speaks is called opportunity cost, and it is one of the more basic, and also more important, terms of art for we in the Merchant's Guild. Now, young lady, I hope you will forgive me for the presumption, but- you did not grow up in a wealthy household, did you?"

"...Not really, no," Faith said. "We weren't poor, Mom and Dad always had food on the table, and we never worried about not being able to pay rent and getting kicked out, but... I got a single dollar's monthly allowance, growing up. And I knew that Mom and Dad couldn't give me more than that- they were stretching just to give that much. So..."

"So, now that you're part of an adventuring party, you're experiencing some culture shock," the man said sagely. "I understand completely- I had a similar experience when I first joined the Merchant's Guild. Oh, I was very good with money when it was just numbers on paper for my exams and coursework, but twenty dollars? That was as much money as I spent in a whole month on food, rent, and a new pair of socks. But, when you're a merchant, conducting all these business deals... You deal with huge amounts of money. Money that perhaps isn't yours, and that you can't spend freely, but that you're still spending. And after a while... Well. When you're cutting a deal worth a million dollars, spending a hundred dollars on a good bottle of wine to lubricate the negotiations feels less like an extravagance, and more like a hard-nosed business expense."

"...Hm."

"What I mean to say is... You'll get used to it, young lady. Just give it time."

"Thanks, I guess... Mister, uh...?"

"Oh!" The man smacked his forehead with the heel of his palm. "Where are my manners? Augustus Hernandez, active member of the Merchant's Guild. I do apologize for interrupting, young man, but I'm told you are the owner of that steel caravan with the shiny red paint. I don't suppose I could convince you to tell me where you got it, can I?"

Augustus planted his hand on the table, leaning forward a little, and in a neat little sleight of hand trick, a hundred-dollar bill appeared underneath that hand, sticking out enough that I could grab it.

"I built it myself," I said. "And while I don't have the time to build one for you or whoever your client might be..." I hummed quietly. "...Well. That doesn't mean we can't talk business, Mister Hernandez. Go tell the valet we'll be another hour, and I'll grab you a seat."