9 - Recipe

We arrived at a building that resembled a courthouse from the outside. Grand columns and a large entryway, and lots of people who looked like criminals hanging around the steps.

The inside looked more like a bank, with tellers behind a long counter with protective bars. To the side were some tables, and the exact thing I was looking for; the job board.

I rushed over and began scanning the board, like a ronin checking for their second exam score.

First, I confirmed there were no job postings for what I had in mind for our business. Every request was adventurer related in some way. The only overlap would be gathering quests, but from what I was seeing the guild only handled them in bulk. Okay Costgo.

Second in my search I was looking for easy battle requests with decent payouts. Something mild to do a test run with Toast and see if he can learn attack commands. Kana had to keep reassuring me his stats were so high he wouldn't get hurt easily. A few caught my eye, so the last thing we had to do was talk to a guild receptionist and see if I could do quests without registering, or if not, did I even qualify as a loser Level 1?

As it turns out, the answer was no to both.

Well that's just great, I'm doomed to poverty in any world.

Kana kept chatting with the receptionist and I trudged to one of the tables to wallow in self pity. One of my favourite pastimes you know. I'd barely sat down when she came scurrying over.

"Mitsuta! You can register!"

"Huh?"

"You can register if you're in a party with me and Maja!"

"We can?!"

I jumped out of the chair and lifted her off the ground in celebration, swinging her small frame back and forth. She laughed gleefully.

My angel! Our saviour!

"Isn't it great? Because I'm Level 15 and Maja is Level 40 you can join us!"

I stopped swinging her. I placed her down carefully and returned to my seat, and put my head in my hands shamefully.

I'm such a freaking loseeeeeer!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Maja joined us for our second trip into town that day, leaving Toast in the room despite his protests. The Innkeeper was alarmed at his barking having never heard such a thing before, but backed off completely and nervously thanked us for our patronage when we said it was an angry Spirit Partner.

First we stopped back at the shop, where the shopkeeper offered me 5 gold for the antler. Not as much as I was hoping for, but his reasoning of not knowing much about Moroza, and not being sure if he could use the 'fake' item in the same way as a real Jika antler was logical. He let it slip that a real Jika antler would have been 50 gold because it's a Boss-Tier monster, and I felt my spirit leave my body. 

If only!

I decided in the end to keep the antler as a memory of our first isekai experience, and of meeting Kana in a way.

As we were leaving the shopkeeper called out to us with a warning.

"You kids better be careful. I don't know how you fought off a Jika, even if it was a Moroza, but those things are taking the form of higher and higher level boss monsters lately. I don't know what's gotten into them."

Kana and I looked at each other with a worried expression, thanked the shopkeeper, and went on our way.

Later at the guild, we all registered as a party with Maja as the leader. Her level meant we could take quests up to rank D. It may have been higher if we had an attacker in our party but the receptionist was wildly confused why such an eclectic group had formed in the first place, I think this was her way of looking out for us. 

Now that we were formally adventurers I could get started on bearing my share of the burden for money-making. Our respective roles were a little seedy, but you gotta do what you gotta do to get by.

Maja would wait by the gate to the city in the evenings and offer to heal returning adventurers without a healer in their party for a fraction of what the Church was going to charge them. She got more than a few offers to abandon us and join up with other groups. Luckily for us she didn't have an interest in adventuring, just in healing and refining her spells.

Kana started scouting for builders and tradesmen at work sites who had ripped their clothing, mending them before they even thought to go to a seamstress or ask their wives at home. I'm positive her adorable charms made for good business as one day she'd even brought home more money than Maja. She was very proud of herself.

I, on the other hand, began taking Toast out on easy quests to practice fighting and get materials to sell in the shops.

The first request we took I'll admit called out to me simply because it had the word 'goblin' in it. I was extremely disappointed to discover a creature that was not the little green man of my RPG dreams, but instead was essentially a pig walking on two legs. That's an orc you fools! And why isn't the name Uta or Shishi?! 

I squared myself into a battle stance for some reason, and pointed at the 'goblin'.

"Go Toast!"

I know it's not Pogemon, please let me have this.

Toast surprisingly jumped into action and headbutted the 'goblin', turning it to pixels with one shot. We continued on like this and I checked his status after every battle. No changes. One of the 'goblins' even hit him, and even though I was beside myself with worry, he'd only lost a single hit point out of 3000. It was obvious we could safely move on to higher level monsters.

Most of the easy requests with low level monsters required you to prove that you killed X amount of a monster by bringing back the loot to the guild. You got to keep half the loot and in exchange got a small reward as a bonus. It depended on the monster and amount, but the ones I was starting us off with were only worth a couple silver at the most. 

I'd need to move past my mental block about Toast fighting before we got any semblance of decent money as a reward, and he'd proved quickly the low level monsters weren't worth our time. I could also only visit the guild once or twice a day, as I was a slave to Toast's pooping schedule. Sometimes he'd hold out on the items too, particularly the "goblin meat" which I'd come to find was the smoked-ham-looking thing he'd taken a shine to back in Kana's village.

After a few weeks, Toast was fighting level 15 monsters like Sori with ease, and I had (mostly) stopped freaking out. He hadn't needed to use any skills yet, but we were slowly and steadily accumulating SP. Last I checked we had 38 points and I was elated thinking about using Telepathy with him.

I'd also been keeping track of any Moroza we'd come across and was starting to find a basis to my theory that Toast would not attack them unless they provoked him or me. I had come up with several theories, but I couldn't prove any of them. It felt like I was still missing pieces to the puzzle, and I wasn't sure if it even meant anything in the first place. I'd have to just continue keeping an eye on things for more clues.

On the money side of things we were looking good though. We had to spend a bit here and there on our room, food, and general necessities, but ultimately we were only a few days off from reaching our goal. I'd also found a toy shop in town and splurged on some things for Toast. Kana and I had picked out a small stuffed Sagi and a colourful ball for him, but sadly this world didn't have anything that squeaked. 

Maybe someday my boy.

He went ballistic for them and destroyed the Sagi doll in a single evening, even with the lack of a squeaker. Luckily Kana could infinitely repair his new treasure, and he started sleeping with it after some time. 

Maja did her best to open up with Toast but because she still believed he was a Spirit she was definitely tense any time he touched her or barked. She was starting to find his "talking" to be charming at least, and parroted back his "awa awa"s and "aroo"s.

Three more days passed like this and finally we were looking at a bag of 50 gold on our table. Now all that was left to do was pay the landlord of that shop and we could start our business.

Everything had been so hectic all this time, I had never actually seen the location they'd found. Kana said it was still empty as of this morning. She oozed despondency. I stifled my lecherous excitement. Not that I would ever cheat on my beloved!

There was another inn much closer to the area the shop space was in, and I was getting worried that our current innkeeper had been asking too many questions about Toast lately, so we agreed to move on from here as well.

We packed our single mountainous backpack, said goodbye to the room that had been our home for the last month, and departed for the northern district of the Great City Linna.