The Harsh Realities of a Pre-Modern Society – Part 2

“Twenty-four Bronze?! That’s basically nothing!”

We left the central market of Adaville with Yzara’s fury rising to a crescendo. She hadn’t even bothered putting on her usual fake priestess voice anymore, thus drawing a couple of sidelong glances.

“Now, now, that’s still over a week’s labor of one of these workers—”

“I don’t care about those guys! We have fifty gold to get. Fifty!”

We went to the market to sell our excess mob drops from our Wisp hunt the other night—a couple of staffs and extra magic crystals. Still, all together, they amounted to a pitiful amount compared to Yzara’s objective. For comparison, fifty Gold was equal to 15000 Bronze coins.

“And we also need to buy clothes and equipment, too. This money’s probably going to disappear in a flash.”

“Ugh… Maybe we should go rob a bank or somethin’… or the Miner’s Guild…”

“I know you’re the Demon Queen and all, but let’s not resort to committing crimes for now, okay?”

“Ya only act like a Hero when it’s inconvenient, don’t ya? Let’s go down to the Adventurer’s Guild and get a quest done already.”

Sigh.

She was truly a force of nature. And just like a tornado, all I could do was follow in her wake.

* * *

Thankfully, the situation at the Adventurer’s Guild was much better. We updated our status to full guild members fairly quickly with the Skill Scrolls, and we could finally take proper quests. Then, we went to peruse the various options available in the big quest board, and eventually found those Restoration quests Marielle gave us special permission to take.

There were actually a bunch of them, with the starting price at six Bronze—but some quests could go up to a few Silver.

“Still, getting the fifty Gold will be—” Chloe began, but then she was interrupted.

“Are you guys thinking about taking these quests?”

When I turned around, there was a rough-looking muscular dude with a long sword strapped to his back, smiling forcefully.

“Y-yes, we are,” Chloe said, her voice stammering a bit. I couldn’t tell if she was genuinely taken aback by him or if it was all an act.

“I’d suggest going to an area you can handle, in that case.”

“What do you mean?”

“The problem with these quests ain’t the actual clearing part. It’s protecting the Cleric from monster attacks. Since it’s just the couple of you, you might have some trouble if you go to a more dangerous area.” Then, the man drew a smile I was sure he intended to be friendly, but to me just came across as creepy. Guess men don’t change even inside a game world, huh? “Say, how about me and my crew go with you? We can protect the little lady there while she’s casting Restoration.”

“Huh… Let us talk about this in private first.”

Chloe gestured me away from the man and whispered when we were far enough away.

“(I’m just here goin’ through the motions. There ain’t no way we’ll hire that goon.)” Yeah, because I’ll be the one doing the restoration, not Chloe. “(Plus, I don’t like him. I can see him leerin’ at me. Makes me wanna cut off his di—)”

“(Woah, woah, calm down. I get it. I’ll talk to him.)”

I approached the man again with the best poker face I had. “Thanks for the offer, but we can take care of ourselves,” I said curtly.

Instantly, the man’s creepy smile faded. “Is that so. Your loss then. Don’t come crying for help if you get killed out there.”

He left the quest board, clicking his tongue and mumbling about something. My dude, I’m saving your family jewels here. You don’t want to be messing around with this lady, trust me!

When the man was out of sight, I grabbed a quest that seemed easy enough to test out the waters for the day.

I guess this is our first proper adventure!

I was actually getting a bit excited about it. When I “played” in the Arcforge beta, I was basically trying to trigger glitches so I could report my findings or fix them myself. I never bothered with the whole “questing” element of the game that much, since my stats changed according to whatever I was meant to fix that day.

As they say, better late than never!

* * *

After grabbing some food on the way out, we left Adavile through one of the gates. Because of the White Death, the roads outside the city had come into disrepair, and were no longer used to travel to the rest of the continent. Instead, they mostly worked as a gateway to bring in raw goods obtained from the wilderness outside the city to be processed. The customs control to go out were relatively simple—all you needed was a permit, in our case tied to a quest. To return inside, however, you needed to be thoroughly checked by a Cleric to make sure you weren’t infected.

All this security caused massive queues to enter the city, with people and goods accumulating outside the gates for hours or even days on end. This then prompted the creation of shanty towns outside the city walls that provided services to the people waiting for their turn to enter.

Unlike the orderly, industrial city, the shanty town we passed through was a mess of wooden buildings with no rhyme or reason to them. Inns next to storage depots next to taverns next to open-air dumps. Here and there, a scantily-clad lady even offered her services to unfortunate souls waiting in line.

“My beautiful Arcforge… what have you come to…”

“Huh? What was that?” Yzara asked.

“Nothing, nothing.”

The Demon Queen had been strangely quiet this whole time. Doesn’t she have anything to say about the shanty town?

“At least it looks like adventurers returnin’ from quests have a fast track inside. Damn, if only I had my portal magic with me, we could just zip straight back inside.”

“That would create a whole other host of problems and blow our cover.”

“I suppose. This majorly sucks. Let’s just go to our quest location and get this done quick.”

After leaving the shanty town, we followed the instructions the guild receptionist left us to get to our designated area. Adaville, with its economy based on forestry, was surrounded by vast areas of woodland. Initially, after the chaos of the disappearance of the Heroes and the White Death invasion, people just cut out the dead infected trees to make cheap wood products. But after things calmed down, they slowly began to reclaim more and more land, and actually started replanting some forests to sustain their industry.

We went from narrower and narrower dirt roads between the trees until eventually reaching our destination. We must have walked a couple of kilometers in total. There was a low fence separating the normal, freshly-planted woodland from the White Death land with its monochrome tone that looked straight out of a vintage photograph.

“Guess we have this entire area up ahead to clear. Can ya get started already?”

“Sure, right awa—hold on, why did you take out your demon bits?”

Standing right next to me was Yzara, her horns and tail and single wing in full glory—still dressed in a priestess’ outfit, which made her look ever-so-funny.

“Don’t call ‘em ‘demon bits’. This is part of my identity, dumbass. Ya know I need to stretch ‘em out whenever I can.”

“Why can’t you just do that in our roo—ouch!”

Yep, you guessed it. I got bonked. Kinda nostalgic at this point.

“I said, I gotta do it whenever I can. There’s no one around here to see me, anyway.”

I suppose she has a point.

Dejected, I sighed and pulled out the Debuggun and started zapping away. Instantly, like it had done in Luribel, the White Death-infested forest instantly returned to its original lush green. As I kept going, I noticed that the area we had to cover was actually quite small, about the same size as Luribel or so.

If we keep going like this, we’ll be able to get some decent money without much effort at all.

I was so trigger-happy, in fact, that I failed to pay attention to my companion at all.

“Argh! What in Baelrak’s name is this shit?!”

“Yzara?!”

I ran back to the source of the scream as fast I could.

Did we finally get attacked by strong monsters?!

When I got to her, though, I breathed a sigh of relief.

“Oh, it’s just a Slime.”

Yzara was standing in the cleared wooded area, while a blob of viscous fluid kept together by magic bound her legs. Her Priestess’ Staff had been thrown aside somewhere, so she couldn’t cast magic properly.

“Just a Slime?! This thing is disgusting! It’s so slimy and gross. I hate Slimes!”

“Oh right, that was in the design documents…”

The creative writing team had been a bunch of freaks who spent their days closed off in their own little open-space room “brainstorming ideas”. Credit where credit’s due, though—all the lore they made up for the characters and the world was highly praised. Yzara especially had had a lot of thought put into her lore, even though no players had actually seen her in-game. One such pieces of lore was that the Dark Horde she commanded had zero Slimes in it, not because she couldn’t control them, but simple because she hated the things.

Guess that’s yet another instance of that useless lore becoming real, huh.

“What the hell are ya standin’ there for?! Get this thing away from me!”

“Why don’t you do it? Even without your staff, you should be able to—”

“Ugh! It’s creeping up my leg!” She said, as the slime monster began crawling upwards, enveloping her leg. “Do it, Takashi, or I’ll personally whack ya to death!”

“Alright, fine?” I brandish my Wisp’s Staff and pointed it at the Slime. “Shadow Strike!”

A blob of dark light flew from my staff’s tip and hit the monster directly. Slimes were incredibly weak monsters, and Profane Magic was quite effective on them, so I expected it to just explode immediately. However, despite surely taking a massive amount of damage, the Slime did not perish.

Huh? That’s odd.

Only when it turned around and saw its empty white eyes did I realize what had just happened.

“It’s infected too!”

“Of course it is. We’re in the middle of enemy territory here!”

The Slime didn’t seem too pleased by my sudden interruption of its snacking on Yzara’s legs. It detached itself from her and lunged my way—fast.

Slimes aren’t supposed to be that fast!

“The hell—Shadow Strike!”

My incantation came in just barely in time before the Slime reached me. This time, the attack did make it pop like a water balloon, filling the soil with a blueish watery substance.

“Phew. Finally, that’s over.”

“Ugh… my clothes are all damp. I’m glad I’m just borrowing this outfit.”

Then, without any sort of hesitation, she began peeling off the outer layers of the robe.

“What are you doing?!” I said as I turned around to not see the spectacle.

“I’m taking these off so ya can reset the clothes and make ‘em clean again.”

“Again? I’m not a laundromat, you know.”

“I dunno what that is, but if ya can keep me away from slime, I don’t care.”

“Anyway, I’d advise you to keep those on for a while longer.”

“Why?! Don’t tell me ya have some sort of slime fetish!”

“I’d rather have that than our current situation.”

I merely pointed forward.

There were dozens of equally large Slimes—with vacant white eyes—surrounding us.

“Oh, for Baelrak’s sake!”

Guess we’ll be getting some experience out of this, at least.