Chapter 4: Testing and Market Conditions Part 2

  Nixen was displeased. They had grabbed the rest of their gear from the room the dwarf was using at the AG inn. It wasn’t a lot. A short-hafted battle axe with an overly large head and a travel pack that could be mounted behind the saddle.

  Omara and Winnie were ready to move as soon as he informed them that a quest had been accepted. The two women had seen the notice on their seals and eagerly accepted. They both saw the profit potential was clear.

  A possible lower-level infant or developing dungeon, with interlopers present, room and board covered with a retainer, was a good quest. Even if the completed quest were not ludicrously profitable, it would help.

  They all needed a completed quest on the books to advance in the guild. Cato, on the other hand, was hungover and moving slowly. He had been oblivious to the opportunity.

  Omara had suggested a solution with a mental magic spell she had been working on. Nixen had warned her that any mental magic on a sapient was forbidden without consent. She had nodded and dropped it.

  Nixen chivvied Cato out of the room he had used while Cato grumbled and held his head. Then, the paladin took a mental inventory of the gear that would be needed and snagged the rogue’s pack to ensure the scoundrel couldn’t come back to the room with an excuse.

  He would for sure fall asleep again. He rummaged briefly through the pack to ensure the supplies, including the caplace, were present. Nixen pushed Cato out the door once the gear was accounted for.

  Nixen knew each member could attain the next rank if kept on task to complete more quests. The dwarf had several mantras to success. Keep your party alive, achieve the objective, check on your muffins, and keep the client happy.

  Once Omara, Winnie, and Cato were all apprentices, they wouldn’t need direct oversight unless it was deemed required by Nixen. A few more commoners having an entry-level position of authority, with voting rights measured at three-fifths, in the guild would help it as a whole. Nixen thought about that some more.

  Except Cato, that boy needs more oversight if his uncles want him to stay alive past next month.

  In the spirit of the apprentice goal, the paladin was willing to push every Guildie to overcome their flaws. Even if sometimes it felt as if pushing was all the stout dwarf was doing.

  Each of the flaws preventing them from advancing boiled down to not providing enough benefit to the guild. That, and needing to capture at least one rare mob each. Those had been getting more scarce in the past few months.

  The last bottleneck of the advancement to apprentice was the capture requirement. After apprentice, time in service to the guild and completed quests were all that was required until applying for master candidate school. One could reach journeyman rank within a year or two after apprentice by regularly completing the guild quests.

  The catch was that certain quests were worth more to the guild than some of the monetary rewards that were brought in. A flat setup fee of gold was given to the guild for each quest. The amount varied based on the quest’s difficulty, which didn’t amount to much when all you could do was fetch quests or minor mob clearing.

  Political influence or a reputation affecting the guild positively would help advancement tremendously. The setup fees took care of most monetary needs for the guild’s administration and upkeep. That and the small transaction fee every junior guild member had to pay for damn near every service offered.

  Another catch: they could only charge that extra setup fee because of the guild’s reputation for efficiency. Any NPCs could kill some interlopers, but not without the lord of the local area spending more on equipment and training than what the guild charged.

  The Guildies didn’t care about the setup fee for the quest. It came out of the pocket of who was hiring them. On the other hand, the guild cared about the source of every copper.

  Anything found or looted by the party completing the quest belonged to the group who retrieved it. They could give a portion or all to the guild to contribute more.

  Catch number three. That extra contribution wasn’t much in the Guild masters’ eyes unless it was affordably precious. If the party gave too much, they wouldn’t be able to provide for themselves the same training and equipment the Lords didn’t want to pay for. Being able to budget as an adventurer was a crucial skill.

  Naturally, the Guildies could buy equipment from the guild, but the wealthier members usually snapped up the good stuff for their more profitable students. Excellent gear was also desired by the Noble families so you needed luck if you didn’t have money.

  Cath number too many. The guild didn’t offer discounts until the later ranks anyway as an incentive to keep advancing.

  There were some shortcuts, but the best way was to do the work. Too high of a reputation, and a group may be called on for a quest they weren’t allowed to refuse. They could be viewed as the only ones capable of finishing it and “come down with the deadsies,” as Master Clemency insisted on calling it.

  A good reputation was just a reputation. Real skill was learned with blood and tears, usually.

  Nixen had explained this more than once to Cato and the entire group. Omara and Winnie understood why they did so many quests, sometimes for little personal reward, and needed little extra instruction. Winnie was especially aware of some of the costs.

  She had paid them with her last group as she was the only survivor of that mortally expensive lesson. Their journeyman had abandoned her group in the middle of a deadly encounter. He had been censured for the action, but that hadn’t saved her other party members.

  Cato’s true motivation, however, couldn’t be roused unless it was immediately lucrative. Once he caught the sense of actual profit, his ambition kicked in. The epiphany Cato experienced first as a child was easily summed up as, “Wealth is good for your health.”

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  Nixen sighed as Cato continued to grumble as they entered the stables. Finally, they saddled up their horses and met the rest of the group in front of the tavern. Brynnly was mounted near the two young women, an impatient look on his dark face.

  “About time,”

  Chimed Winnie as she trotted up to the group on her horse. She was scritching the juvenile owl, Pellet, sitting on her shoulder.

  “Thought for sure he would have slipped away from you and gone back to sleep. That was a significant amount of booze he was tying on last night.”

  Nixen grunted in response as Cato scowled at the burly woman playing with her owl. He gave her a rude gesture as she smiled at him with saccharine sweetness.

  Omara, on her horse, spoke up without looking from her tome of spells,

  “There’s a spell for that.”

  Cato scratched his chin and asked,

  “For drinking or sleeping?”

  “Sobering you up and cleaning you. Do you want it or not?”

  Cato scowled at her but eventually nodded grudgingly.

  Omara smirked and closed her book. Then, staring intently at the dark-haired rogue, she started to mutter just as darkly. Cato dyed his hair black as bouncy blond curls were more eye-catching than needed in his role.

  Omara started to weave her slender fingers in intricate patterns and muttered some more as she cast the spell,

  “Applesaucery…”

  Cato stiffened as she finished. Then, dismounting from his horse with a look of panic, he jerkily ambled over to Omara’s horse and pulled a suspiciously ripe, green-colored apple from the saddle bags.

  He jittered over to the watering trough in front of the tavern. The apple was squishing slightly in his fist. Brynnly and Nixen looked on with amusement mixed with disapproval. Winnie finally gave in and chuckled as Cato babbled,

  ”Now Omara, I’m sure there’s a spell for everything you can think of. No reason to try them on me.”

  “I’m not trying this one out. I made it for this purpose a while ago…you agreed anyway. So I’m helping you learn.”

  Nixen frowned at this phrasing and made a note to remind her that mental magic was dangerous territory to play around with. She could get them all killed if she wasn’t careful.

  Cato cried out as he drove the apple repeatedly onto the top of his head until the juices and apple bits ran down. It slid nastily down the sides of his face and head.

  He then took hold of the edge of the watering trough and dunked himself repeatedly in the water. Once he had the appearance of being more awake and the bits of apple no longer splattered across his face, he looked up, gasping for air, at Omara, who was laughing into her hand loudly.

  “Was that needed?”

  He continued gasping as Omara replied,

  “Yes, you were being saucy.”

  Brynnly and Nixen groaned. A grin and bow was Omara’s response as Winnie let out vindictive, belly-shaking laughter in reply.

  “Don’t be sour about it! She’s just working out her morning tartness! Hahahahahahaa!”

  Cato looked furious momentarily and then seemed to deflate as he wiped the excess water from his face and head. He spoke as he moved to then remounted his horse,

  ”Fine. If we’re done with that example of why I shouldn’t trust magic, can we get moving? That didn’t help my hangover. Now I’m wet and hungover.”

  “You smell better, though.”

  Brynnly, underwhelmed by the unprofessional antics he had witnessed, grunted as he nodded to the south road leading away from the outpost and up the sloping hill.

  “About four hours for us to get back to Red Adder county if’n we don’t dawdle. We can put you all up in the local inn until morning. I’ll show your party to the site of the mob incursion in the morning.”

  Winnie frowned at the non-descriptive name and asked,

  ”You don’t know what mobs we’ll be facing? All the quest mentioned was at least ten burrower types. That doesn’t narrow it down much for us. Are they even rare mobs?”

  Brynnly looked back over his shoulder at Winnie,

  “If we had the PCs available to find that out safely, we wouldn’t have hired you lot.”

  Winnie and Nixen shared a grim look as Omara flipped her hand dismissively at the disparaging remark. She went back to reading her book as the group started out.

  Cato yawned. Winnie had been with Nixen longer than the other two of their party. So they had some lengthy discussions as they rode. Omara interjected to ask the paladin what types of Lord couldn’t defend their territory properly but could still afford the AG.

  Nixen tried to explain how the economics of it worked in some counties, but he was a paladin. They were not known for mathematical acuity. At least Jeph’s paladins weren’t. Nixen encouraged Omara to cast judgment only once they had more information about what was happening in Red Adder county.

  Brynnly, properly annoyed by this open questioning of his lord’s ability, kept leading the way out of the Guild town and down the road to Red Adder county in silence.

  The journey was uneventful to start. Passage of others still appeared unusually light on the small highway leading to their destination. However, it seemed to Brynnly that the day’s heat may not have been why the traffic was so light on his way to the outpost.

  “News spread swiftly, and bad news has wings,”

  He commented to the party as they traveled. He had an edgy look as he gazed at the woods around them.

  “Whatever your party is going to hunt tomorrow, people in the surrounding lands are aware of it and want no part of it. It’s not good for the word to spread this far and fast.

  “The people are spooked. At least, I hope that’s why no one is on the road this time of day.”

  The party of adventurers glanced at each other. This wasn’t uncommon with more significant mob migrations. A hidden dungeon appearing that threatened more than a small village would also be possible.

  News like that was spread quickly, but word had only been passed today about the issue in Red Adder. It made little sense that travel would be disrupted. The flyspeck villages between the Red Adder county line and the poorly named outpost of Mediocropolis should have had at least a few farmers returning from a market in the small town.

  Nixen replied tersely,

  ”Eyes sharp, people, I don’t think this quest will be as straightforward as we hoped.”