The Earthenders

After looking at the different job opportunities in the Magical Research Academy at Iliad, it became quickly apparent to me that most of these jobs weren’t for me. Cooking in the mess hall? Been there, done that, died there in my previous life. That sucked. Working in the library? Nice, quiet, and contemplative, yet I think I would go insane with boredom rather quickly. For a second, I thought it might be a good opportunity to learn about this world, but then I saw that library workers couldn’t read on the job. Pass. Merchandise store? No. Sure, copying the books with magic was appealing. However, dealing with angry customers was hard enough in a world without magic. Teacher’s assistant? I’m not knowledgeable enough for that. Janitor? Maybe. They cast magic to clean up large messes, which could help me get more mana, but usually, it would just be regular cleaning.

All in all, these jobs just wouldn’t help me accomplish my goals. That left the private sector and the guild. I was going to find a way to earn my keep no matter what. First, I looked at different shops that might consider hiring me. One that caught my eye was Big Boy Bungee’s One Stop Scroll Shop. This was a rather popular location for college students to work as they could expend their mana by making scrolls for money at the end of the day and then go back to their dorms and sleep to gain it back. Of course, with this convenience there was a high demand to work there, so it didn’t pay particularly well. I still decided to stop inside with Zhāng and the professors.

“Hello, welcometoBigBoyBungee’sOneStopScrollShop, how can I help you today?”

“Hey there, I’m rather new around here and I was wondering what it’s like working here?”

“It’s pretty simple. You make scrolls at night after the store closes and we pay by the scroll; stronger ones will get you higher pay.”

“Okay, is there a maximum?”

“Yes, we can only take in 1,000 scrolls every day. While we sell most of them, they pretty much have an infinite shelf life so we have a big backlog already.”

“Is that why you can’t pay very much?”

“It’s one of the reasons. The demand is just lower than the current supply.”

I thought about it. Sure, the pay was trash, but it was so convenient. It would be barely any work and I could have plenty of time to work on assignments at the Magic Research Academy.

“Are you actually going to do that?”

I turned around to look at Zhāng, who seemed rather confused by my willingness to work here.

“Well, it would be pretty convenient. Sure, the pay’s not great, but it could easily fit into my schedule and help me with my goal of becoming a more powerful magic user.”

“Okay, but the pay is kind of a serious issue here. For your work, you only get 20% of the scroll’s value when they sell it. Wouldn’t it make sense to keep the scrolls for yourself?”

“I guess so, but what happens when I get enough scrolls so that I don’t need any more?”

“Give them to other people? Like those who can’t use magic? Sell them to your friends for a lower price?”

I paused.

“I guess that makes sense. I hadn’t really thought about it that way.”

“Can we just go to the guild already? Everyone reading this already knows where this is going.”

You can probably guess what happens next. We went to the guild, and made a new one for free. Because we’re both pretty new here to Escapia, Zhāng and I started a guild together. Even if we weren’t going to use the guild as our primary income source, we could always have it as an option. The only problem was thinking of a guild name.

“What’s something we have in common that we could base the guild name on?”

“I mean, we’re both new, from earth, and hot.”

“And what?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

I stopped for a second.

“We’re both from earth, sure, but we’re kind of from the opposite ends of it. Maybe we could call our guild Ends of the Earth?”

“I kind of like that, but it’s a bit of a mouthful… how about The Earthenders?”

I chuckled.

“Kind of sounds like a band name, I like it.”

And so our guild was born. We didn’t know it yet, but we had a lot of insane adventures and quirky friends waiting for us. The guild was definitely the most exciting option. Although I was worried about how long quests could take, this was the option that would help me achieve my goals in this world. Also, I could already pick up that Zhāng kind of liked me. I didn’t know if it was because I was from somewhere different or something else; I just wanted to get to know her better.