Chapter 16: WelcomeDay 16
Feeling much better today, I start preparing porridge for breakfast. May as well check up on the other part of my soap experiment. The fake-soap I left out to dry yesterday looks sort of weird. May have been too cool outside. On the positive side, the guys already dug a little drainage channel and even cleaned out both tubs.
Oops, I ended up burning the oatmeal. I guess that woke the guys in a hurry.
While trying to shovel in the ruined breakfast, I took a moment to recheck the list of avaible jobs.
Ah, I got Alchemist and Cook. Hmm, Cook was unexpected. Did my chem experiment count for both? Well, it was just boiled fruit and baking soda so, maybe it was fruit-soda ha ha. Well, it was either that or my burnt oatmeal. I don’t know the triggers for every job and I really shouldn’t care as long as they work.
My new Alchemy job gives me the Pting skill — I think that makes a protective barrier. Yeah, it was used for Sherry back in the manga. Oh yeah, Sherry. I wonder when she’ll be avaible. I think it was after the move to Curatar, but before getting mixed up with the elves. Ah, I don’t even know when that is, was or will be. Anyway, I’ll just go to An’s shop soon and ask directly — without asking for her by name.
Even after passing on the chance to get Roxanne and sort of promising myself to stay away from getting (female) sves, I don’t want to miss out on the opportunity of meeting Sherry. Being able to turn her into a bcksmith will really open up some fantastic opportunities for both of us. The manga made her seem quite rational and easy to deal with, but maybe she won’t like me personally or won’t want to be used as a tool. Still, she’s worth looking for to ask if she’d be willing to join me.
For bonus points, I have more than enough to bump up one of my EXP cheats so I’ll put the points into the one that seems to help the party as well. Identify and the reset skills will be lumped together as ‘Essential’, since they are. With the remainder, I’ll throw them into Crystal Acceleration, MP Recovery and Critical Hit Rate, just so they don’t go to waste. I’ll be able to increase my other EXP skill once I reach level 40.
Bonus Points: 127
Lvl
Cost
Skill
Note
2
3
Char/Job/ID
essential
4
15
EXP Needed
1/5
5
31
EXP Gained
10x
6
63
Weapon
Durandal
3
7
Extra Jobs
4 jobs
2
3
Crystal Acc
4x
2
3
Chant Omit
keep
1
1
MP Recovery
temp
1
1
Crit Hits
temp
Now that I’m done mumbling to myself while pying with my tablet and virtual screen, I see that the others have already finished breakfast. I’m really lucky to have the social status to simply appear eccentric rather than insane.
Already forgetting that I made it, “Thanks for breakfast. Let’s get ready to head out.”
Anxious to reach more challenging floors, I took us back to where we left off in Nordselm’s Labyrinth. Easily making it to the first floor boss room, we fought against the creepy-looking boss called Pan. Fortunately, I remembered the trick to keep interrupting its spells and it was all over by the time it was driven into a corner.
After this, we stopped for a short break to eat some bread. I left the guys to rest near the entrance while I walked past the ice patches to the vilge. I passed out the few extra rolls we had from home — stale, but edible. I’m certainly not going to solve the problems of an entire vilge, but I can afford to do a bit while I’m in the neighborhood.
One of the braver children tried speaking to me, ?■■■■■ ■■■■■ ■■■■■■■??
Not understanding, I simply told him to help himself: ?Allez-y, servez-vous… il y en a beaucoup.?
Don’t know why I responded in French, but speaking in the nguage of the aristocracy just felt wrong here. Of course, I couldn’t help noticing that the status of French and English were reversed in this world, as least for the apparent time period.
I’m assuming that the kid spoke in Elvish. At least, it didn’t sound like Valic, but I don’t know if nguages are geographical, species-specific or have a more complicated distribution. Regardless, it sounded vaguely germanic, but not really German, as far as I could tell.
Not sure why, but the idea of German Elves seemed amusing until I thought about forest-dwellers in the medieval era of Earth and then it sort of made sense. I wonder what Tolkien’s made-up Elvish was meant to sound like. Sure would be cool if it was like this, not that that’d help me here. For all I know, that kid was just making meaningless noises arranged to resemble a nguage. Oh right, real person, not an NPC.
No more bread rolls so I waved goodbye and we went back to work.
The second floor added the already familiar trees so we still had it pretty easy. We eventually reached the boss and chopped down the slightly bigger boss tree. It’d already gotten pretty te so we only went to the third floor to see that the next monster would be rabbits. Could just warp out from here, but may as well behave properly since we were seen entering the normal way — well, not when we first arrived, but close enough.
We walked further away from the vilge and just as I was getting ready to open a warp portal, I heard a woman’s scream. Pretty sure none of the normal monsters imitate people so we quickly moved ahead to see what was going on. Concerned that this could be an eborate trap, I had the guy’s take fnking positions, but remain hidden.
Not far ahead, I saw that it was just a group of people arguing… no, it was one-sided and more violent. A male elf seemed to be leading a gang of cat-kin in assaulting a lone, female cat-kin. It seemed mainly verbal at this point, but it appears that she had at least been pushed down onto the cold ground. [1]
Don’t know exactly what was going on here, but it wasn’t something I wanted to ignore. And, I’m not being so sexist that I’d only rescue women, but I have yet to see a gang of girls beating up a helpless boy.
Since Identify told me that they didn’t hold criminal jobs, I’ll start with a non-lethal approach. (Feels like there should be something wrong with that statement, but I can’t quite figure out what.)
The leader is named Jakob and is a level 13 Vilger — that should help me set the tone. I motioned for the guys to stay out of sight and walked towards the group. I tried to approach casually with no effort to hide nor attack — like what they were doing was perfectly natural and expected.
In a familiar but stern tone, “Hey, are you Jakob? Boss want’s to see you.”
“Huh? Now? But I’m busy teaching this servant a lesson.”
“Alright, I’ll tell him that you’re too busy with some chick.”
“Ah, no, um, right now?”
“What do you think?”
Jakob mumbled something to his ckeys that I couldn’t quite hear.
I respond to the implied question, in the darkest way I could muster, “Don’t worry about the girl. I’ll take good care of her. The byrinth is nearby after all.”
One of the ckeys asks worriedly, “Jakob, we were just supposed to scare her. Isn’t this too much?”
Quietly, “Can’t be helped. Anyway, probably better this way.” More clearly, “C’mon guys, let’s go.” “Thanks.”
“Yeah, sure, whatever.”
Once the creeps started to walk away, I approached the shivering woman, who was curled up in a defensive position. Her injuries seemed mild, but I still cast a couple heals. She was clearly terrified, but this wasn’t the environment for a gentle approach — the creeps were still nearby. I picked her up and carried her to the byrinth. My guys followed a bit further back and hidden. We needed to get her out of here, but my warp portals can only be entered by party members — I discovered that when I once forgot to reform the party.
I sent a party invitation and gently whispered her name in the sweetest voice I could manage, “Alina honey, we need to go.”
This trick was fortunately enough to gain the needed trust… in an abduction sort of way. I immediately opened a portal back home for the four of us to make a quick escape.
Alina soon passed out from the stress or simple exhaustion so I pced her down on a bed in one of the spare rooms. I took off her shoes, loosened her colr and pulled a thin bnket over her. Theo fetched a cup of water and some bread which we set down on the nightstand. Not really wanting her to wake up to the sight of three big dudes towering over her, we left with the door partially open to hopefully signal that she wasn’t a prisoner.
“Guys, please make something easy to eat, like soup. I’m going to keep an eye on our guest. Fine to start eating without us, but keep some warm.”
I sat outside the room and waited. After 20 minutes or so, I heard Alina start to stir so I tapped on the door and walked in, keeping my distance.
“Where am I? What do you want? Stay away!”
“My name is David. This is my home. You’re safe here.”
“How can I trust you?”
“Uh, I don’t know.”
“Huh?”
“What I can say is that you’ve been removed from a dangerous situation so this should at least be better.”
“Why did you bring me here? What are you going to do to me?”
“I brought you here to rest. I’ll feed you if you’re hungry and then take you wherever you’d like to go.”
“That makes no sense. I want out. Right now.”
“OK, the door is open and the vilge center is a 30-minute walk. But, it’s te so there are no carriages before morning.”
“That’s just a trick to keep me here.”
“You aren’t being held and no one has touched you inappropriately.”
“Nah, this doesn’t feel right. You sound like a pervert.”
“Well, I’m not. You are free to leave, stay here or come down to join us. We can take you home or to a town now or ter. Your choice.”
With that, I walked out, but made sure to leave the door open. Damn, I’m really getting tired of getting called a pervert for not molesting helpless women… not that I’m about to start. Of course, I understand that she’s in shock and that I don’t exactly look innocent… especially considering that I did sort of trick her into following me and she woke up on a strange bed.
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Talking to the guys, “Our guest woke up understandably disoriented so she probably needs some time to adjust. While we’re waiting, let’s have a quick strategy meeting. I want to change our general schedule. Nothing too strange, but I’d like to break our work days into blocks of morning, after lunch and after dinner. Lunch breaks will usually be together and the break before dinner should be longer and more flexible. Each work period should be about 3 hours.”
“Sure, Boss, no compints.”
“Well, if we have the energy and are getting bored, we could always do a bit more, but overworking leads to unnecessary risk. Of course, it’s also possible to flip the schedule so we work at night and sleep during the day. What do you think of that?”
Marcus says, “Well, since you’re asking, I’d like a day schedule best. It’s hard to sleep when the sun is up. Having a little extra time during the afternoon for chores also sounds nice.”
“Advantages and disadvantages to both, but let’s start with this daytime schedule… I like that better anyway. Next, is the question of where. We have a few pces avaible to us so instead of just focusing on one, I’d like to spread out a bit. It’s a bit less efficient, but safer to move at a steady pace as well as getting used to fighting different combinations of monsters.”
“Sure, whatever you say, Boss.”
“Curatar is crowded in the mornings, but practically empty te at night…”
“…”
“Um, I restricted myself to the lowest and safest floors. Anyway, Harba is probably best to leave it to the Knights. Nordselm would be great, but we need to know more about what’s going on over there first.”
“That pce seems really suspicious. Probably some bandit camp nearby.”
“Agreed and I don’t want to be surprised. Speaking of, I snuck over to Vale a couple days ago and it looks like the criminal gangs have finally stopped looking for us. We could go there in the mornings if Elven Territory is inconvenient or maybe just in the afternoons.”
“Um, Boss, maybe it’s a bit risky that you’re going pces like that without any backup.”
“Point taken, but I was being careful, I promise. In fact, I bought the bathtubs to avoid the temptation to bathe over there.”
“…”
“Well, I didn’t do it.”
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[1] Actually, it’s really cold and rather remote so there’s probably some hideout nearby. David comes from a cold environment so doesn’t really think about it.