18/1/0
[
[Stats][Magic][Inventory][Skills][Help]
Class: Adventurer 20, Leyline Strategist 3
Strength: 10
Body: 8
Agility: 9
Dexterity: 6
Intelligence: 58+5
Willpower: 15+1
Charisma: 8
Stat points: 0
XP: 16/240
]
[
[Stats][Magic][Inventory][Skills][Help]
Mana: 795/795
Spells:
Magic Missile: 6 Mana
Missile Binding: 17 mana
Mana Fist: 28 Mana
Fireball: 78 Mana
Locate: 70 Mana
Locate (Map): 140 Mana
Summon: Skinning Knife: 20 Mana
]
[
[Stats][Magic][Inventory][Skills][Help]
Inventory: 11/38
Copper 57x
Silver 73x
Gold 2x
High Quality Mapping Parchment 6x
High Quality Pen 1x
Compass 1x
Herbal Tea 7x
Thornberry Stew 8x
Crooked Ham Sandwich 11x
Slowheal Potion 3x
Mana Potion 5x
]
[
[Stats][Magic][Inventory][Skills][Help]
Cartography: 102
Skinning: 100
Cooking: 106
Tailoring: 106
Herb Gathering: 97
Alchemy: 24
Enchanting: 0
]
It took me a few days of grinding, but I got there.
Buying Enchanting and Alchemy were both major steps up for me, even if they each cost a gold and were painfully expensive to actually use.
Enchanting, for one, needed something called refined mana. From what I could gather, a mage could make a single speck of it by compressing a hundred mana into a solid form, or it could be found, very rarely, in chests. Right now the auction house only had five pieces listed, each at fifty silver.
That was a little too rich for me.
Alchemy was better, though only barely.
Since I gathered most of the herbs myself, the biggest cost was the setup. Tailoring had workstations players could use in the shop, but the alchemy store sold actual kits. A basic one for skill 50 potions cost fifty silver, and the next one, for skill 100 work, cost five gold.
Still, it was a good investment.
I went to sleep expecting to keep working on it the next morning.
Instead, I woke up to a terrible stench.
It smelled like sewage left in the sun for far too long. I covered my nose almost immediately, barely managing to stumble out of bed without throwing up, only to realize the smell did not stop outside my room.
It was everywhere.
Even outside, it filled every corner of the city.
Looking around, I saw other people fighting against it just as helplessly as I was.
Relief only came when a soft white light fell over my body.
[Protection from Inconvenience]
The smell vanished.
I turned and saw Sheral standing there.
"Now what did you do, boy?" she asked, her voice stern and playful at the same time.
"This isn't my fault," I shot back, matching her tone.
"Well, I do..."
She got cut off by one of the guard NPCs shouting across the street.
"Attention, powerful adventurers! The sewers have been ravaged by ratmen! We need someone to help clear them out before repairs can begin!"
A quest window appeared immediately.
[Accept Quest?]
[Clear Out the Sewer: Clear out the 'City Sewers' dungeon on at least Normal difficulty]
[Reward: 1000 Reputation with Human Capital City, 9000 Reputation with Human Capital City if your party is the first to clear the dungeon, 4500 XP on Normal, 9000 XP on Elite]
[Yes] [No]
I looked back to Sheral, expecting her to finish what she was saying, but she was already scribbling on her clipboard.
"Are you going to do it?" I asked, a little surprised by how fast she had committed.
"Of course. I'm a bona fide level 21 Priest now."
"Level 21? That feels like a jump."
"It is, but after I finished training it gave it to me."
That seemed a little strange, but not strange enough to get in the way of the actual point.
"Well, damn. Should we, you know..." I trailed off awkwardly.
"Oh, no..." She leaned toward my ear and whispered, "You're not talking about working together again, are you? Because I would hate that."
"Yeah, yeah. I get it."
I pushed her lightly, only to realize she was a little steadier on her feet than I was now.
"If you want to whisper Hunter, I'll whisper Jake."
"That sounds good to me. Oh, I almost forgot I had these."
I accepted the quest, opened my inventory, and pulled out a robe and cape.
"I made them. Used white dye for yours, figured it fit the priest thing."
"Oh," she said, equipping them as they appeared on her. "Well, that's nice of you. These are pretty expensive right now, aren't they?"
"Yeah, a few gold, but when I gather the materials myself they're fine to make."
"Well thanks, big guy."
She was already scribbling something else onto her clipboard by then, and it reminded me I needed to do the same.
[Whisper to Hunter: A quest for higher-level adventurers opened up in the city. Where are you?]
[Whisper from Hunter: Hunting in The Nest, past Dusk Falls. It will take me a day to return.]
[Whisper to Hunter: Thanks. The whole group is coming together for this.]
"Okay, I just tol..."
Sheral held up a hand to stop me while she kept writing for another second.
"And I just told Jake. He's pretty close. So what do you say about getting a beer?"
"Sounds fun, but I'll stick to tea, thank you."
That earned me an eye roll.
"When are you going to put some hair on your chest?" she asked, already walking toward the city pub.
We spent a while there talking and catching up.
"That seat taken?"
Jake's voice startled both of us a little.
He was still in half-plate with gold trim, the armor somehow matching his blond hair a little too perfectly.
"Of course not," Sheral said, standing to hug him before sitting back down. "Do you ever take that armor off?"
He laughed and opened his system, swapping to regular clothes.
"I get it. You want me unprepared."
"The only thing you need to be prepared for right now is the smell, and me drinking you under the table."
Sheral bought a drink through the system and slid it toward him.
"Thanks. So, I got the quest. Seems interesting."
His tone sharpened a little when he said it.
"Well, yes, actually," I said, taking the chance to explain. "Dungeons are usually places where most of the enemies are a higher tier than the ones outside. The part that interests me most is the difficulty setting. That implies better rewards if we increase it. Or, that's the short version."
"So what, higher difficulty means higher level?" Jake asked.
"Usually no. Think of it like the difference between Adventurer levels and levels in your real class. They're both levels, but they don't mean the same thing. So I think higher difficulty might give them new abilities, or maybe better intelligence."
"Okay, so you're basically just saying we need to be careful. We got that, Tero. Don't worry."
His tone stung a little, though if someone had tried warning me before the dire wolf, I might have reacted the same way.
"No," I said, pressing the point. "I'm warning you these things might be in a league of their own. Something far from what we've fought before."
"Yeah, yeah. I'll believe it when I see it. Everything here just runs and charges. The pattern might change a little, but it's all pretty much the same."
"I wouldn't be too sure, Jake," Sheral said. "There's a lot we still don't know about this world."
"Hmm. Yeah. You're right."
The way he took her warning immediately, after brushing mine off, almost gave me whiplash.
If Sheral had not laughed at it herself, I might have said something.
We stayed together for the next few hours, Sheral's magic keeping the smell off all of us.
Once night fell, we split up, went to sleep, and met again the next morning in the town square, eating while we waited for Hunter.
It only took an hour or two before he showed up, giving us a quick wave.
The dire wolf was walking beside him.
Even now, just looking at it made something in me recoil.
"What's the plan?" Hunter asked flatly, while Sheral cast the protection spell on him too.
"Don't know, won't know till we're in the dungeon."
"That evil-looking thing needs to be in a dungeon," Sheral added.
"He still has time to serve," Hunter said, glaring at the beast as it glared right back.
It was obvious the thing was not a pet.
Not really.
It was not something meant to be tamed, or at least not cleanly.
"Sure, man. Let's get into this dungeon before we grow old," Jake said, taking charge again in that dumb but oddly charming way of his. "How do we get in?"
"We need to get into the sewers. The only entrance I found was an oversized manhole cover. Do we have a difficulty in mind?"
"Elite," Hunter said immediately.
The fact that he was the one to say it first surprised me.
"Yeah, seconded," Jake added before I could object.
I took a second, then nodded.
"Yeah. Fuck it."
"This is fucking stupid," Sheral said. "But if this is how we want to go, I'm not one to judge."