Chapter 19: PracticeWe went down to see that the guys were setting the table.

  “Ah, thanks for making lunch.”

  “Sure thing, Boss. Figured you’d be hungry.”

  “Um, what’s ‘lunch’? Smells like meat.”

  “Boss likes to take mid-day breaks to eat. He calls them ‘lunch’.”

  (I’d compin about being treated like a geriatric, but it’s actually convenient.)

  “Alina will stay with us.”

  “Welcome, Alina. Good that you could convince him.”

  Sound like collusion — best to ignore it.

  “Anyway, since Alina will be one of us, may as well introduce her to the byrinth.”

  “Um, what? The byrinth? Isn’t that too dangerous? I don’t know how to fight.”

  “It’ll be fine, trust me. Ha ha, sorry, but really, I promise. We’ll start with the really easy stuff. Marcus and Theo are each way overqualified so having both of them in front and me on the side will be safer than walking through town.”

  “Um, OK, if you say so.”

  “Great, we’ll use you as a test-dummy for Rutina.”

  “Hey!”

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  When we were all ready, I opened a warp portal in the living room.

  “Um, David? Am I allowed to ask about that.”

  “It’s a special movement magic called ‘warp’. Top secret, but only one of several. I promise to expin ter.”

  The warp was connected to a tree about 100 m from Vale’s Labyrinth. I opened my item box and took out armor for myself and Alina.

  “Here, put this on — safety first.”

  “Um, David, just how… never mind.”

  Alina looked to the guys who merely wore bnk expressions. Next, I pulled out a spear.

  “It’s good to start out with a spear so you can keep your distance from the monsters and still be able to get in a few hits.”

  We walked to the entrance of the byrinth, which Alina saw as… absolutely nothing special. So, this really is normal to the locals, not just Tuuli. Well, now that I think about it, it’s not much different than Field Walker or my own warp portals so it was just new to me at the time.

  Stepping inside and getting into proper positions, Alina remarked, “This looks much nicer than expected. The calm lighting and clean floors really help. Rutina described it as dark and scary with things jumping out at you from every direction.”

  “Oh, so Rutina has been to the byrinths?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  Speaking of experience, I better check Alina’s: [1]

  [Alina][Female, Age: 17][Vilger: 4]

  At least she has a higher level than the ojou-sama. Alina probably got EXP from doing normal work, which Rutina clearly has never done. She also has the Explorer job, of course, but let’s keep it like this till Vilger hits level five.

  “Woah, what’s that?”

  “That walking tree is the monster of this floor. It’s pretty slow but tough and hits quite hard. Let’s stand back to watch Marcus and Theo take care of it.”

  Whack, whack, whack, poof.

  “Um, that’s it? It just went poof.”

  “Yep, and that little twig on the ground is the reward for this type of monster.”

  “Is it valuable?”

  “Nope, nearly worthless. But, you get better stuff as you move to higher and tougher floors. This is basically all there is to fighting in the byrinths. Pretty simple, huh? I guess we don’t seem quite so cool anymore.”

  “Um…”

  “OK, ready to take a few stabs? Stay between Marcus and Theo and just poke the monster when it feels safe to do so. I’ll watch your back and can heal you if you get hurt.”

  I’ll switch Knight to Monk — this really is good practice for teaching Rutina.

  “Heal? Um, OK.”

  Poke, poke, … poke, poke, poof.

  “Yay, I got it!”

  “Good work, Alina!”

  Marcus mumbles, “Boss sure wasn’t this sweet to us.”

  In a teasing voice, “Oh, do you want me to praise you too?”

  “No, no, just a joke, Boss… please don’t.”

  Of course, Marcus and Theo already had considerable experience, but I probably am guilty of favoring the cute, cat-eared girl.

  We took out a few more trees till it seemed like Alina had really gotten used to it. Since her Vilger job has reached level five, it’s time to switch her job to Explorer. We can leave the discussion of job options till ter.

  “We shouldn’t overdo it on your first trip, but it’d be good to see a second floor. Here in Vale, the next monster isn’t good for beginners so let’s go to Curatar’s Labyrinth. That pce is more crowded so don’t be too surprised if we’re suddenly close to other parties.”

  I opened a warp portal to Curatar’s second floor and pulled Alina through.

  Before she could ask the obvious question, “Yes, it’s very special but looks normal on the outside so it’s OK.”

  “This pce looks pretty normal to me. Do all of the byrinths looks like this?”

  “Yes and never mind about the other thing.”

  Completely forgot that Alina wouldn’t know about teleportation restrictions since she’s only seen Field Walker.

  “Anyway, on the second floor of this and every other byrinth, monsters can appear in pairs. Here it’s Olive Trees from this floor and Kobolds from the previous.”

  “Aah! What’s that?!”

  “That’s a Kobold. It has a knife but it’s probably the weakest monster in the byrinths. The special thing is that it looks humanoid, well, and that it carries a weapon.”

  “It’s really gross… can I kill it?”

  “Sure, go ahead.”

  Poke, poke, poke poof.

  “Ooh, that was easy. These things remind me of Jakob. Can I kill another?”

  “Ha ha, yes, let’s find some more.”

  After a while, Alina got tired of killing little, green ‘Jakobs’ so I opened a portal home.

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  “By the way, that warp thing you do seems pretty convenient.”

  “Yep, it’s a great combination of Explorer’s and Adventurer’s movement magic.”

  “Will I be able to do that ter?”

  “Sorry, I’m the only one who can use warp.”

  “Um, what do you mean?”

  “As far as I know, no one else can use this spell. It’s one of my special skills.”

  “Um, I still don’t really understand. Can you guys expin?”

  Theo says, “No, not really. In fact, it’s a complete mystery.”

  Hoping to get away from this uncomfortable topic, I’ll distract with praise.

  “Anyway, Alina, you did really well for your first time out… and good job to Marcus and Theo as well.”

  “Boss, you know I was joking, right?”

  “OK, I’ll stop being so nice.”

  Alina chimes in, “I don’t mind you being nice.”

  Oh, yeah, I almost forgot, time to tell her about the job change.

  “Thanks, then, as a reward, you now have the Explorer job.”

  All three stop and just stare at me.

  “Sorry, just kidding. I didn’t actually give it to you — you earned it on your own.”

  Alina rexes a bit, but the guys don’t appear convinced.

  “Go ahead and try. Think about ‘Item Box’.”

  “Um, OK… huh? A chant just popped up in my head. Why? What’s going on?”

  “It’s OK. It feels weird the first time, I mean, um, try to recite the chant.”

  “Oval where in countless treasures lie, unloose thigh tch um, item box open.”

  “Almost, but separate ‘O vault’ and push ‘wherein’ together. A bit harder to hear is that ‘thigh’ should be ‘thy’. Try again, and say it with confidence.”

  “O val wearing … O vault where in … O vault wherein. Thy. Thy.”

  “Yep, sounds good. Go for it.”

  “O vault wherein countless treasures lie, unloose thy tch — Item Box, open!”

  “Yay! I did it. I really did it. Um, I did, didn’t I? You wouldn’t tease me.”

  “Nope, it’s real, look.”

  I quickly switched Monk back to Knight and opened her status card.

  “See? There it is: Explorer. We can talk about your job options ter. For now, you can carry your spear in your item box so it’s always avaible.”

  “Oh, that is nice.”

  “It only works for byrinth-reted items and, of course, it will grow in levels with more work in the byrinth.”

  “I thought changing jobs would be harder.”

  “Nope, that’s all there is to it.”

  “Um, Boss, that’s…?”

  “Fine… I left out the minor detail that I just switched your job myself.”

  “…”

  “It’s no big deal, really. My way simply saves the time and expense of going to a guild temple.”

  “…”

  “You’re right, I’m not being fair. Marcus, you’ll qualify to become a Knight before the end of the year. Will that be OK with you?”

  “Um, I wasn’t asking that… but, yes, that would be wonderful! Thank you, Boss!”

  “Theo, I don’t know as much the Swordsman job, but I don’t think it leads to Knight. While we’re with Rutina, I want to temporarily switch you to Explorer when we need to move inside the byrinth. Later, we could switch you to Warrior so you could also qualify to become a Knight, switch back to Swordsman or even leave you on Explorer so that you could eventually become an Adventurer. The st one will take much longer, but it would be a useful combination for you and Marcus.”

  “This is um… Boss, you just say things like this like it’s nothing. No, I’m sorry, that didn’t come out right. I mean, can I get back to you ter?”

  “Sure and sorry to be so confusing.”

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  Well, I failed again to make my unique, OP skills sound reasonable. Now that I think of it, I’ll need to come up with a better story for Rutina. Maybe I could use a gimmick of some sort to obscure the actual job manipution. Well, nothing could be more mystical than a crystal — other than the actual magic of this world. A crystal that gets destroyed in the process both looks cool and prevents ter inspection. I don’t have anything like that and anything I could buy could be recognized. So, I’ll just have make one.

  Time for a quick shopping trip and may as well be take care of another task.

  “Not at all for the reason of getting out of this conversation, I’d like to check up on Nordselm. Won’t take long but best not to take you there yet, Alina.”

  “OK, please be careful. I could prepare dinner while you’re away.”

  “Really? That’d be great. Thanks, I’ll be back in an hour or so.”

  “Um, Boss, please take us too.”

  “Right, good idea. Guys, please come with me, just in case.”

  I first warped us Curatar to find an apothecary. I’ll just start with the real name and figure it out from there.

  “Hello, do you sell alum? It’s a…”

  “Yes, indeed, Sir. How much do you need?”

  “About a handful in a small sack. And maybe a small clump of some dried herb — something fragrant.”

  Cool, that was easy. I bought the ingredients and stopped by a bread stand to buy a couple sacks of cheap rolls. Done with the essentials, I took us just outside of Nordselm Vilge. Practically freezing up here, especially since I didn’t think to bring my cloak.

  It was fine to just pass out a few bread rolls to children st time, but these people aren’t exactly starving and probably wouldn’t appreciate me acting all savior-like. It’s not like I’m opening up a soup kitchen, which would be better to do in Vale… if I wasn’t so zy or didn’t mind getting recognized.

  I tried to be a bit more social this time and introduced myself to a few of the locals, not just kids. I showed the bread rolls and tried to suggest some sort of trade, which they immediately understood and led me to one of the rger shacks. They gave me a small jug of their locally-produced mead — well, this pce looks like they’d make mead. Anyway, it smelled like fermented honey.

  One of the vilgers seemed to be asking for some particur goods — I guess this pce really is remote so goods are more useful than cash. I wrote an approximation of what he said into my wax notepad. Since non-dungeon items can’t be stored in an item box and the jug looked fragile, I decided to skip the byrinth and just go home.

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  Dinner wasn’t ready yet so I decided to start my new chemistry experiment. I grabbed another small pot to ruin, filled it about a quarter full of water, added some mead to add a little color. I heated this to a low simmer — nice smell. I stirred in a few spoon-fulls of alum a little at a time till it looked pretty much saturated. I poured this solution into a wooden bowl — didn’t really need to ruin the pot. The clump of dried sage was suspended into the solution by a string tied to stick that pced across the bowl — brilliant feat of engineering, if I do say so myself.

  I draped a cloth over the bowl for protection and went to join the others already seated at the table. Alina made a nice stew and made the others wait for me.

  “Alina, I should expin that the reason I want you to get some experience in the byrinth is in case we need to make a quick escape. If things go poorly with Rutina, especially if she gets hurt, we may need to move far from this area. That said, I honestly believe it will go well. The chance of Rutina getting hurt is close to zero. I just like to be prepared for the worst.”

  Well, that wasn’t exactly the uplifting pep-talk it was meant to be — good thing I never pnned on becoming a coach.

  After dinner, Alina says, “David, can we talk more about my tasks?”

  “OK, let’s go upstairs. I still haven’t put my stuff away.”

  Once upstair, Alina asks a bit anxiously, “David, do you trust me now?”

  “Yes, I really do. I don’t share my secrets easily.”

  “Good, because I trust you too.”

  “…”

  “Oh, that sort of thing isn’t a task.”

  “No, that was just a trick to get you up here.”

  “Ah. I appreciate your honesty.”

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  [1] Original character. Introduced earlier but now you know she’s not just an extra.