Chapter 13: HouseWe came back from Curatar’s Labyrinth a bit early so I decided to do some chores. The guys had worked hard and deserved to rest — I’m no sve driver after all.

  “Hey guys, give me your sacks and I’ll go cash in the drops. Meet you downstairs for dinner a bit ter.”

  I warped to the adventurers guild, sold the crystal and drops with my trade cheat active, just to squeeze out even more Nars. I also bought a few empty crystals so I could swap them as soon as I see one change to a target color.

  With still a bit of time before dinner, I warped to the Vale byrinth, hacked a few trees and walked out the front like it was perfectly natural. A few thugs were not-so-casually loitering nearby.

  Making sure I was heard, I called back to the entrance, “Hey guys, let’s go… Ha ha, right, they can’t hear me out here”.

  I walked back inside and quickly opened a portal back to my room at the inn. Originally, my intention was to make the bad guys believe that I had probably died in the byrinth. That’d be a perfectly reasonable conclusion if they could feel confident that I hadn’t slipped past them.

  Now that they have actually seen me walk out, they would know I was still here. With this certainty, they are likely to put even more effort into catching me either inside or when I eventually try to leave. The gangs would waste resources, grow impatient and begin to doubt whether I’m really worth all this effort. All I have to do is occasionally peek out and look for my shadow.

  Back in my room with the warm and fuzzy feeling of bringing my enemies grief, I went downstairs to join the guys for dinner. After a bit of light exercise alone on the second floor of Curatar’s byrinth, I went to bed rather pleased with myself.

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  Day 12

  Since we were pnning to go to Curatar’s Labyrinth today, I started to copy the maps for the next floors into my notebook when I realized that I’d never need any map after finishing its floor. At 20 Nar each, I could just give them away or use them for scratch paper. Happy with the minutes I’d saved, I went down to breakfast a bit early… and waited till they opened.

  “Morning, guys, we’ll start with the third-floor boss room. I don’t think that there’s anything special about the boss spider, but you have your antidote pills, just in case.”

  After breakfast, we met in their room and warped in close to where we left off yesterday. After a short wait, we fought the barely-tougher spider and progressed to the fourth floor. Here, we encountered very un-sheepish sheep. Monsters could now attack in groups of three — it would be interesting to see if the group size increases again at the sixth or the eighth floor.

  Other parties could be heard nearby, but it was empty enough for the map to be helpful. Still too crowded to use magic consistently, but I fired off a few multi-target shots now and then. This floor wasn’t quite trivial like earlier so we walked more than jogged. We got pretty far before lunch, but not quite to the next boss room before it was time for a break. I warped us back to the guys’ room at the inn.

  I announced, “I’m going to take off for a couple hours to look for a better pce to live. Here’s some money for lunch or whatever and I’ll come find you in town when I’m done. I don’t care what you do while I’m away as long as it isn’t a crime or anything too risky.”

  I gave them a few silvers each and took off before they had a chance to respond. It’s certainly possible to rent a house in this town, but I should be able to get something bigger and cheaper in a smaller town. Besides, there’s sure to be thugs here that know the ones in Vale. I may not have reached enemy-number-one status, but a little extra caution wouldn’t hurt. I made sure that I had my writing materials and headed off to the adventurers guild.

  Walking up to a bored-looking Adventurer, “Hey, know of any quiet little towns or vilges in the area? I’m looking for a pce big enough that they’ll let an outsider rent a house, but too small to have slums or brigand hide-outs nearby.”

  “That’s a rather odd request and frankly a bit suspicious. You wouldn’t be looking to start doing some crime yourself, would you?”

  “Ha ha, I guess that did sound pretty weird. Nah, I just can’t afford a house in a big city, but need more space than a room at the inn. Anyway, a good crime-boss should already know the area.”

  “Yeah, you got a point. Well, there’s a town called ‘Callum’ near here. [1] It’s pretty close to the vilge I grew up in. It’s big enough for a few stores, but only a small merchants guild and not much else.”

  “Sounds good. I’ll give you five silvers to take me there. That includes my thanks for the recommendation. I’ll get back on my own.”

  Just as advertised, Callum appeared to be a pleasant, little town. Some produce markets and a general store, but little in terms of infrastructure. There were some fenced areas, but probably just to keep out the smaller animals. I saw a few town guards, but nothing that looked like a knight’s station.

  The receptionist at the small merchants guild told me that Callum is mainly a farming community, but also acts as a small trading hub for some rural routes. The merchants guild handles most of the real estate business in the area, but the person in charge of that is out of town.

  Satisfied that Callum would be a good location, I warped back to Curatar’s adventurers guild and went out to find Marcus and Theo while munching on the meat-skewer I got along the way.

  The guys were near the byrinth so we continued on the fourth floor and soon reached the boss’ room.

  “I think the boss-sheep has a spell to stun, but my sword has [Chant Interruption] so I might suddenly rush forward to stop it.”

  With our unfair three-on-one attack, we managed to sy the boss before it could cast a spell.

  The fifth floor introduced a lollipop-shaped monster, but I could’t say that out loud, even if it had a hard head like a sucker. I really don’t remember all the silly names from the manga (as opposed to the silly names I make up), but the HUD called it a ‘Colgen Coral’. That might just be a bad transtion, but I guess it’s supposed to be softer than normal coral as a low-level variant. Maybe it would progress like:

  Colgen Coral -> Keratin Coral -> Coral Coral -> Crystal Coral.

  Not sure how many boss levels there would be, but I’ve locked in my predictions. Now I need to find a way to gain elevated privileges so I can start editing monster names… but not to cheat.

  Despite having my full attention on fighting, it was time to stop before reaching the lollipop-king, or whatever boss will be called. I opened a portal back to the inn so we could have dinner.

  “Guys, I visited a nearby town that looks like a good pce to live. Want to go check it out with me tomorrow morning?”

  “Sure, that sounds nice. Don’t know if we could be any help though.”

  “Well, I hope to make that our base for a while so good if you two see it before deciding.”

  Keeping to my now regur schedule, I warped over to Tuuli’s hut after dinner. I’d really like her to come with us to Callum, but I’ll wait till we’ve found a good pce to stay and make it look inviting — prep the nest. Of course, she might prefer to stay here in the vilge and there’s got to be some reason I’m being kept a secret, but I’ll leave that up to her.

  “Hello, Tavi. Nice you again see.”

  “?Kiva?, um… never mind. Hey, Tuuli. Good English!”

  “Englisi? What is englisi?”

  “Sorry, I meant ‘B?m’.”

  “We speak now ‘Raami’.”

  “Right, that’s what this is called in your nguage.”

  “No, we say ?kir■■n ki■■li?.”

  Well, that settles it, I’m giving up on learning Valic. It’s just too complex, too alien. [2] While I’m not at all envious of Tuuli’s quick grasp of English, we continued with her lessons till it was time for bed.

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  Day 13

  After breakfast, I opened a warp to Callum at the same big rock the Adventurer used. I sent the guys to look around town while I went to the merchants guild. Sara, the guild master, expined that there were only two properties avaible at the moment. The first was cozy and cute while the other was a great big mess. Of course, I chose the tter.

  Sara told me that this pce even had a small Carriage House. This would be great to give the guys some privacy, but it turned out to simply be a pce for a carriage, not the guest house I had wrongly assumed.

  Prices out here in the sticks are understandably lower than in the city. Despite the size, the annual rent was only 26k. Adding a few gardening tools, my special discount brought the total down to about 19k. Probably shouldn’t have been so stingy, but too te now. We’ll need to put in a bit of work anyway.

  Now that I think about it, I had brought the guys along for their opinions, but closed the deal almost immediately on sight of the pce. I used my Explorer job for the status card check by the vilge chief. I sort of signed my name on the papers pushed in front of me after they wrote down my details. The numbers checked out so the rest was probably fine.

  “Hey guys, what do you think of this town?”

  “Quiet and boring — looks perfect.”

  “Good, come check out the house.”

  We walked about 2 km from the center of town — I decided not to ask if they knew ‘kilometers’. If the local unit of distance is different, would the auto-transtion adjust the numbers? Would others hear it as 5 spans, or whatever? It’d be fun to hear them say ‘two’ while holding up five fingers. Or, maybe most things are set to metric since it’s a game world.

  “Wow, Boss, this pce is huge. At least ten people could live here.”

  “Maybe, but I’m still guessing that you guys wouldn’t mind sharing a room. There’s a nice big room downstairs by the kitchen.”

  “Um, we could get by with less you know.”

  “And maybe you’ll have to someday. Let’s spread out while we can. I’ll be upstairs because it looks the most like a boss’ room.”

  “Good pn. Not having you look enough like a boss just hurts our reputation you know.”

  “Ha ha ha, if only that room would be enough. Anyway, gd you like this pce since I sort of already rented it. Nothing else reasonable around here anyway.”

  We spent the rest of the day cleaning and buying stuff for the house. Looks like the pce hadn’t been left empty for more than a couple months and nothing had major weather damage. Most of the furniture should be usable with some minor fixing. No great hurry anyway since we still had another paid night back at the inn in Curatar and plenty of space here in case some stuff had to be repced.

  There’s a small creek nearby that should at least be good enough for sewage. The main well was pretty far away. Not a problem since I pnned to produce most of our water magically anyway. The market was near the center of town at a reasonable walking distance. Besides, if we wanted anything special, I could pop over to the city or even to the capital.

  Eventually, we went back for dinner at the inn and cleaned up our stuff to be ready to depart after breakfast. Another clean-up task awaited me back in Vale — the gangs. I know that I should let them stew. It makes more sense to let them waste their time. Somehow, I could’t drag it out any longer.

  I borrowed the steel sword I’d given Marcus, stuffed a cloak into my backpack and warped to the byrinth back in Vale.

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  [1] Callum isn’t in the LN.[2] No offense to the native speakers, but this is what it’s like for the rest of us.