Chapter 6
A new quest
Jess and I made our way through the bar area which was crowded with people returning from day missions like us, and celebrating successful contracts. It seemed likely that the crowd from earlier mostly consisted of people heading out for the day. The stairway to the upper floors of the adventure building was tucked into the corner next to the bar and we climbed to the second floor.
"Claire and I share a room at the end of this hall" Jess pointed down a corridor as we stood in a intersection branching off leading to dozens of rooms, "Paul is down this way, we meet in his room when we aren't meeting in the bar."
She then led the way to Paul's room and knocked once before opening, not waiting for a response. Paul was sat on his bed while Claire was nowhere to be seen.
Before we could ask Paul explained, "Claire wanted to clean up quickly, so I refilled your bucket. She should be here shortly. "
Jess nodded and sat heavily against the wall, dropping her pack in front of her.
"Don't you want to get out of your armor first?" I asked
"Mmm nah, I don’t mind it, it's a good habit to keep ready when you're on the clock so to speak. We are still technically working until we break up for the day and this stuff takes forever to remove anyway. I need Claire's help." Jess stated matter of factly.
I shrugged and found a patch of floor that looked somewhat softer than the rest and took a seat myself.
"We have a lot to discuss but it needs to wait for Claire, hopefully she shows up soon, I need to hit a couple shops before closing." Jess said
A few minutes and a soft knock came at the door.
"Come in" Paul said, and then added quietly "At least she waits until invited"
Jess ignored him. Claire came in wearing a more casual less plated version of her robes and sat on the other bed.
Jess cleared her throat and leaned forward, "Settle in we have a lot to discuss. We have a new member, Mr. W" She nodded toward me before continuing, "He needs to know our capabilities better, and our personalities as well. Not to mention we need the same from him, I will start. I’m a level fifteen champion, most of my stats are in an evenish split between constitution strength and dexterity, I get enough from my class to keep my endurance reasonable. My skills are power slash, quick dash, and rallying cry. Paul?"
Paul made a face but gave his breakdown nonetheless, "pyromancer, level twelve, heavy on intelligence, a little wisdom so I don't burn all my mana and become worthless, skills are minor spell craft and loose restrictions"
Claire followed, "I am a cleric for the mother of light, level eleven, my stats are mostly wisdom and some constitution, my skills are minor miracle, and holy light"
Then they all looked to me. I only kept from blushing and choking on my words with my perfect body control and lack of circulatory system. "Well... I am not really up to your levels."
Paul snorted
Jess sighed, "We know, but level doesn't matter.... ok it matters but not like that, you rushed in and took a blow for Paul today, that was your task, it helped the team and you performed it well. We won't judge, we just need to know what you're capable of"
"Besides a low level means you can level up and get stronger faster!" Claire added with more enthusiasm than usual
"Alright," I said, "I'm level 3, warrior, mostly constitution, only one skill called wait"
I liked this group, even trusted them somewhat, but no way was I risking them thinking I was some sort of monster and racing to see if they could bisect, incinerate, or smite me first.
Jess spoke up, clearly hiding surprise, "Well, like Claire said, plenty of room to grow, you se.."
Paul cut her off, "The fuck you talking about? I've been playing along since you seem like an alright person, but carrying weaklings into danger is what we left the guild to get away from. Not to mention you are lying. We can't bring some random nobody in and just ignore all the weirdness and blatant lies."
Claire cringed back and Jess scowled but didn't contradict him
Jess sighed deeply and said, "look we don't," She hesitated before changing what she was going to say, "I don't like to pry, but Paul has a point. Your role in the team would be one requiring trust. We all have to trust one another but a guard who's meant to protect more fragile teammates even more so. I can trust that you won't let us down in a pinch but I can't make the rest of the team do so."
Paul scoffed, "I can't trust my back to a blatant liar."
Silence took the room for a time. How had they known? What gave away the game? At least they hadn't vaporized me as a monster yet.
Before I could ask anything, or lie more, or even make an excuse and leave, Claire almost whispered, "Why do you lie to us? we are friends."
She sounded close to tears. That was more painful than Paul's anger or Jess's disappointment. I could hear the betrayal in her voice.
I decided a little truth would be acceptable, "look, you're right, I did lie. I'm not sure which part gave it away but my true circumstances are... delicate. I really want to adventure with you all but yes I am only level 3 so I am weak. If not teammates then at least friends?"
Now all three of them looked confused.
Jess finally asked, "Why did you tell us you had the skill wait?"
Now it was my turn to be confused, "Because I do?"
"Then what did you lie about?"
"Mostly my circumstances, my class also isn’t warrior but I can't tell, you what it actually is right now"
Paul who was becoming more and more agitated cried, "You cant have a skill until level five, how do you have a skill at level three, and why choose something like wait, what does it even do?"
That was news to me, good thing I didn't tell them about the other two skills. I figured they would be suspicious if they knew about them but I was wrong about why.
I came to something of a half-truth that would satisfy my own conscience, "Well the truth of how is a little complicated but the short version is when I was born into this world, I came with that skill, I didn't choose it. I didn't know you could choose skills, or anything about level five. I still don’t know what it does or how to use it honestly."
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They all stared at me for a time, Paul with suspicion, Jess with contemplation, and Claire with hope.
Jess broke the silence, "skills become more natural to use as you practice them. A new skill can be activated by thinking the name of the skill, mmm... loudly for lack of a better term. Try it"
Well now that it was said it seemed obvious, that was how I operated the system windows after all. I tried it, WAIT...
Suddenly Claire was in front of me mid sentence, "othing wrong with him, its like he’s asleep with his eyes open."
"How long was I out?" I asked, startling Claire so much she fell over.
"Ah, sorry didn't mean to startle you" I apologized, standing and offering her a hand
Whoa, her hands were so soft and delicate it was like grasping silk.
"No its fine, ahh you... you were like that maybe thirty seconds?" She stammered, her blushes were starting to seem like the natural state for her.
"Well that's about the most useless skill I've ever heard of." Paul said, he seemed much happier now
"Hmm... hopefully it wont interfere with the level, five skill." Jess added
Claire looked at her hand a moment and turned to the others with conviction, "I trust W, I vote we bring him in and train him up"
Jess nodded slowly
Paul clicked his tongue, "you're still lying and you're still weak... but Jess thinks you're good people. I'm willing to give you a chance"
Claire gave another of her squeaks of joy and Jess smiled.
Jess smiled "Alright, with that settled, we separate the reward, the standard we go with is to repair damaged gear first, then an even five way split, one part to each member and one part to a team coffer used for upgrades, restocks, and emergencies. The only damage this time is your shield W. Ten copper to each, then ten to outfit W with better gear so we don’t need to worry about the damage. I still have oil for my armor and sword so I don't need any from the team funds everyone else is good right?"
Grunts and nods confirmed that.
"Then W and I will meet tomorrow morning at sunrise for a shopping date"
Paul rolled his eyes and Claire looked slightly irritated she didn't get to do any shopping.
"W, I'm not sure where you are staying but, this room has two beds and a split bill is a saved copper, Paul could definitely use the company"
Paul seemed about to protest but then glanced at the small stack of coins in front of him and nodded curtly.
"Mmm yeah, that seems reasonable" I said.
"Then tomorrow. Again, good work today team" Jess grabbed her pack and the girls were out.
Paul swept up his coins and stood, "I'm going to get some food, don't go touching my stuff"
Then he was gone as well. What a day. I had snuck into the city, found a real life adventure guild, made new friends, joined a team, hunted some goblins, and even made a little money in this new world. Now if only I knew what a copper was worth.
I decided tomorrow would be early enough to find out and collapsed on my new bed. Sleep took me before I hit the pillows.
Ding
I woke with a start. What now? I was going to have to look through the filter options again to find a no Ding while sleeping option. I'm in a new world and still can't escape annoying alarms. Reluctantly I opened it up and found something that would derail my plans entirely
New feature unlocked: leaderboard
Quest added
Active quests
Road to domination 1
Over the past 10 days you have shown a willingness and capability to survive. Now you must prove superior to your peers.
Objectives: control at least one territory and observe the battle of the weak in one hours time, or survive the battle of the weak and claim the top of the world
Reward: adaptive territory map
I wasn't completely sure what that quest meant but leader boards were always fun. It only took a single try to pull up the leaderboard with the mental command ‘leaderboard’.
Leaderboard
1. Anonymous territory: 2,370
2. Mind flay territory: 1,892
3. Anonymous territory: 907
4. Anonymous territory: 573
5. King Zethantol territory: 174
6. Havanteal territoy: 109
7. Yisgath territory: 84
8. The Holy chosen collective territory: 73
9. Participant 3 territory: 52
10. Anonymous territory: 46
...
53. Feltham territory: 1
54. What territory: 1
55. Anonymous territory: 1
...
Time to next battle of the weak 0:00:57:23
Interesting, there was apparently some way to make yourself anonymous on the leaderboard. That may be handy information. Seems like there was a many way tie for fifty third with just the one territory. The top few were quite scary, only ten days in and the top five had nearly ten percent of the maximum territory. I wondered what the battle of the weak thing was. According to the quest I should watch this battle somehow, that was odd.
I was getting a bad feeling about this, how would I watch some battle that was presumably between people from all over the world? I had an idea but it could really screw things up if it happened how I feared. On a hunch I woke Paul up.
"What the hell? What time is it?" Paul grumbled
"Hey, I know the timing is shit, do you have a world map?" I asked
Paul glared
"I’m sorry seriously, but this might be an emergency" I pleaded
"Claire keeps the maps, fuck off" and he rolled over and covered his head
Well, I hope I was paying enough attention earlier. I left the room in a rush. For some reason that timer was giving me more and more anxiety, it felt like I would be going somewhere far off very soon. It took three tries to find the girls. Now I would find the value of my new money buying drinks for various adventurers next evening.
"What is it" Jess said groggily
Without her armor she was a sight to behold, she had arms the size of legs and legs the size of… bigger legs. Look I couldn’t process how she looked, she was exactly my fantasy girl. Soft features contrasted with a toned muscled body just this side of being weirdly muscular. Like an Olympic athlete that modeled on the side.
I shook myself from the trance. “I’m not sure, you know those secrets I can't completely share? They might require me to go somewhere tonight" I whispered trying not to wake Claire who managed to sleep through my frantic knocking.
"What are you talking about? Its the middle of the night where are you going?"
"I don't know, hopefully nowhere, but maybe somewhere. Look I just need to look at a world map for a minute, do you have one?"
"If you're in some kind of trouble I need to know. We will help but we can't have some sketchy people coming after us in the night."
"No no, I just need a map, please?"
She paused but eventually relented, "Fine, wait here"
I shifted from foot to foot watching the timer as I waited, down to thirty eight minutes. After six eternities Jess handed me a rolled up parchment and crossed her arms.
"Ready to tell me what this is all about now?" She said, all tiredness faded away
"Hopefully nothing, but... if I'm not here in the morning... just wait for me, I... I want to be on this team, really. I will be back, as quick as I can"
She nodded slowly, "just be careful. We are a team so come to us if you need help, seriously."
"I will, I promise. Ill leave this with Paul if I have to go" I said waving the map as I hurried back to our room
"Keep it, we can get another" She whisper shouted
In our room Paul was back to sleep which suited me fine. He definitely wouldn't react well to what I was about to do. I unrolled the map on the floor, fortunately the night was bright and small windows were plentiful. I spent the rest of the timer meticulously copying the map onto my skin in different colors. Basically making a tattoo of the world map. I really didn’t want to be stuck on a deserted island with no idea where to go again. Fortunately as long as no one was around I could peel my skin off and look at it to get my bearings.
In order to get the entire map I started with major land masses and moved to details and islands as I went. The world was interesting. If this map could be believed, this side of the world was one long continent stretching almost from north to south poles. The flip side was a series of island countries, sizes ranging from half of Africa, down to small enough that I would bet I was missing some based on the resolution of the map.
Hopefully one of these quests would give me a map broken down into territories. I had no idea how big they were, if they were uniform, if some were oceanic or really anything other than they existed. The information drought was beginning to gall. In the middle of trying to map some of the smaller islands on the other side of the world, I blinked. One moment I was hunched over a map in a dark room, the next I was in a large white void, several dark shapes around me. Instinctively I knew they were the other participants being hidden from view. A single golden light sprung into being over our shadow heads. The light should have been too bright to look at but it seemed impossible to look away.
WELCOME PARTICIPANTS, AND CONGRATULATIONS ON SURVIVING AND THRIVING THUS FAR