<~> Chapter 17After a few moments the redheaded receptionist came back with a leather bound book. “Sorry about that, I had to dig through ste a little to find this.” She handed me a book that seemed to have as many pages as a typiovel, unfortunately I couldn’t read it at all but I flipped through and saw that on each page was one or two magic circles of all different kinds.

  “That book there is what we used to sell to adventurers before we got the affinity crystal. The idea was that it would have maybe a dozen or so magic circles for every affinity and you would try to cast each circle until you found one you were able to cast. Then you would cast each circle in one affinity until you were capped out. If you had affinity in a magic then you could usually cast any circle of that type but after a certain point your mana version would bee so ineffit you’d be uo tinue higher. Since you have affinity in all of the magics this book covers you’d be able to cast at least three or four circles from each affinity making the book way more useful to you than to the average person. Since we got the affinity crystal in we ’t vinyoo buy the books anymore so you just take that one, no one will miss it.”

  ”Thanks a lot, this was way more than I was expeg.”

  “I wish I could have given you better news but this is far from the worst result. At the very least it will give you a lot of utility in a party and make your own life a lot easier. It’s rather nice being able to start a fire wherever you urely by arranging the ash in a fire pit. Oh and remember not to actually activate any of the circles in the book or you’ll end up ing the paper it’s written on in the process. You’ll have to buy some good magic reactive chalk to use a lot of the rituals so you may want to pie up. I don’t have any here but the guild store door carries it.”

  “Cool, I’ll pie up then after this. Alright, your turn Bel.”

  She nods and then pces her hand on the crystal tablet. A green one glows very brightly and a blue one, a lighter green one, and a pink one glows about as bright as the light magie did for me.

  “Looks like you have a strong affinity for nature magid medium affinities with water, wind, and alteration magics. What css were you pnning on going for?”

  “I’m a noviature healer right now.”

  “Ah, those are very good affinities for you then. Having a strong nature affinity is great for healing and other nature spells are also pretty useful, having water will give you access to a much rger range of healing spells even if they’re not your primary affinity, having even a little bit of wind affinity make you muobile, and having alteration magic could give you access to some powerful buffs and debuffs to help in bat as well. Your affinities kind of make you perfect to be a healer.”

  Bel gave a joyful smile, she seems quite happy that her magic affinities support healing so much. I wonder if her transformation had something to do with it, unfortuhere really isn’t any way of knowing. Maybe if I was to soultoueone else who already kheir affinities we could find out but it isly high on my priority list, even with the soul stealing part removed.

  “Is there any ce you have a nature affinity book for her as well? We’re both pretty o this so she could use some more spells within her main affinity too.”

  “Sure, we have a basiature magic book but that one costs 50 silver.”

  “Ah, no that’s oka-”

  “Sounds good, we’ll take it.” I dig through my bag and sp a gold on the ter. She pulls a book off the shelf behind her and hands me a bag with 50 silver in ge.

  We thank the receptionist and sit down to fill out our forms. Unfortunately, still uo read and write in this nguage I have to ask Bel to help me fill it out. For a css I had her put me down as a Swordswoman even if it isn’t strictly true for me at the moment. Still, with such a high sword skill and my current stat spread this robably the best description of what I could do. I still have 60 stat points I never allocated but sidering I haven’t even unlocked a bunch of stats I was hesitant to put any in anything. Although, sidering my low fiive to my strength and sword skill I might actually want to i something in that.

  “Hey Bel, I have 60 unallocated stat points, do you know how I should be distributing them?”

  “No idea sorry. I’m actually pretty unsure about that for myself. Apparently when I was transformed it emptied all of my stats and now I’m sitting on 80 points and I’m not sure if I should put them in something or wait until I unlo actual magic reted stat.”

  “Hmm… Well vitality and speed might be good choices. Vitality so you don’t die i and speed to make you less likely to be hit in the first pce. But yeah, I agree that you probably should save most of the points.”

  “That’s probably a good idea, I’ll put 20 points into ead save the other 40. It will be pretty weird not having all of my points in strength and endurance. Growing up on the farm those two stats made the most sense for what I was doing.”

  “Do you know how useful the charisma or luck stats are?”

  “You… have the luck stat?”

  I hesitate, “Yeah? Is the luck stat unon too?”

  “Luck is… it’s a hard to say but usually people only have the luck stat if they lived through a near death experience solely by ce. There’s a pretty on phrase among adventurers: ‘one ounce of skill and ten pounds of luck.’ I’m not actually sure how useful the stat is but I’ve heard a lot of stories of people who’ve ied points in it ing out of ridiculous situations. Most people usually believe heroes always have it, there’s no way to know for sure though.”

  “I see… well… I’ll tell you more about my specific css whe back to our room ter.” I still had no idea if it was worth iing points in luow. On one hand having 400 minimum luck meant I could get the bes of high luck without iing anything, oher if I wao ever have more than the minimum luck I’d probably want to actually i in it over time. It wouldn’t help me right now but I feel like I should put 10 in nout in more every now and again. It would probably help me out down the line, especially if I decided to level other csses for a while.

  “What about charisma?” I ask.

  “Don’t really know. I assume some merts and nobles have it but it’s hard to tell because its effects are pretty subtle. People who seem to have a lot of friends are usually suspected of having points in it but I have no idea if it’s worth it or not,” Bel says. That makes me think it’s probably not really worth it in a world where monsters are running around, at least not for me right now.

  “I think I want to put 10 into fio help with my swordsmanship but I want to save the rest until I unlock speed or maybe something magic reted if I get it.”

  “Are you pnning on iing in magic when you’re already a swordswoman?”

  “I have a hunch that magic will do me a lot of favors in the long run, even if all I do is rituals that take time to prepare. I don’t know anything about magic obviously but something about the idea calls to me. Truthfully it could just be because my world romanticized it so much though.”

  “I suppose the same kind of thing happens here. You hear a ory about an amazing hero and then everyone imagihemselves trying it. I never really thought I would be oo go on adventures but with our circumsta makes sense. I’m actually pretty excited about it to be ho.” Bel treats me to a cute smile.

  We spend a little more time finishing up our forms. Bel has to help me out with pusible information on where I came from. Since I don’t remember my precise birth date and have no idea what the dar here looks like I just tell her to pick a date in the middle of summer sihat’s the best I arrow my birthday to. Luckily, she tells me the guild tries not to pry too deep into people’s backgrounds uhey e off as troublesome so I won’t o worry about any of it being seriously questioned. A lot of members are running from something or other and since adventuring be a dangerous job they try not to disce people when they don’t have to. That isn’t to say they would accept a they do happen to have a lot of leeway. Apparently sometimes even crime sves are sold to the guild as punishment so the guild fill out its ranks.

  We take the forms back up to the same receptionist and she fills out her part of the form. She thehem aside and pulls out two sets of small wood pques that look a little bit like dog tags. She uses some kind of tool ohat transfers down our name, role, and joining date. Then asks a few questions firming all of the information. On the part where the receptionist is firming the spelling of my name I notice that I ’t uand the noises she makes when she says the individual letters, that’s curious. A quid a nod from Bel firms that everything is fihough so I just accept the firmation of all of my info.

  “Alright, you’re all set. My name is Mirianna by the way. Since yistered with me I assigned you to my own caseload for this city so if you have any business here I would appreciate you e to me while I’m w. One of our main responsibilities as Guild liaisons is to keep track of adventurers so we tell if anyone goes missing or if any adventurers run into any legal issues while doing quests. If you want to take a quest make sure you report it to me or another liaison if I’m not avaible and we would greatly appreciate it if you notify us if you io leave town or take a long break so that date your file before you leave. This isn’t strictly required but you may be reported as missing if you do not take this step which would just be a hassle for everyone.”

  She sed over the dots again before tinuing. “A swordswoman and a healer make a pretty det two person party but if you’re ied there is anroup of two that registered retly that might round out your party pretty well. To be frank they probably need your help more than you heirs but sidering all of you are pretty o adventuring it might be a good idea to work together. Would you like me to put you in tact with them? You don’t have to it t together if your personalities don’t mesh well but I’d be relieved if the four of you worked together.”

  I looked at Bel. “I don’t mind if you’re okay with it.” I turned bairianna. “Though I’m curious to know what their roles are.”

  Bel chimed in, “I wouldn’t miing with them but if you could make sure they know that we’re beastkin ahead of time that would be best. Not everyone is accepting of beastkin and I wouldn’t want to meet with them at all if that’s going to be a problem.”

  “Ah well that’s part of why I think you would might be willing to work together, the two I have in mind are a pair of Pantherkin sisters. They are a scout and a wild mage but they have been having trouble finding people to party with because a lot of the groups they’ve tried to work with have either been discriminatory about their race or wouldn’t stop hitting on them relentlessly.”

  I nod. “I could see that. I guess we don’t miing them but we’re going to be busy for the rest of the day. How about you ask them to meet us tomorrow m?”

  Mirianna’s expressihtens. “That sounds perfect. They’ll likely be out for the rest of the day anyway, they’ve been mostly doing simple gathering quests si’s dangerous for the two of them to do subjugatios alone.”

  We put on our ags and thank her before finally walking out of the guild building. It’s now the afternoon aill o take Bitch to the sve traders. I’m not really sure how this is going to go but I’d like to get that taken care of as soon as possible. My gut still twisted in a mix of anger and disgust whenever I thought about her.

  Saine

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