CH172

When Thera woke up he prepared a nice breakfast for them before heading to the guild, bringing his bike and the pumps he designed in tow. After explaining the details of the type of patent he’d needed to make last time with the projector, he’d warned her that he was working on something else that would require the same type and she had told him that as long as he made sure to have all of the details written for her ahead of time, he could just drop in.

As he went in and brought everything to the counter, Onk was there to greet them. “I see you’ve brought another fun thing today Ben, is this what everyone’s been talking about seeing you riding on?”

A part of him wanted to question how they saw anything without a face but left it at that. “Yeah, Ceselee told me I could stop in so I just wanted to see if it was an okay time to go up.”

“And a quest we should be able to do today please,” Thera asked after him. They’d already planned to leave their second day off for the week to give them each time to work on other things, and since Ben hadn’t bothered sleeping the previous night it was better for him personally to not be stuck out too late.

“Well, let’s put the quest on hold for now,” Onk told them both. “The guild master actually requested you both see her the next time you came in, so she’ll have time now.”

Ben found himself mildly worried they’d done something wrong, but to counter that he got the impression Thera was positively thrilled under her cloak, so he assumed she knew something about what was going on.

When he arrived at her office he knocked on the door and heard a loud call to enter. When he did, Ceselee looked up from her paperwork to see just who it was.

“Ah, perfect timing. I have to say, you’re both very convenient to always come for quests on the same day, makes you easy to expect. Not so much whatever you have with you though.”

“It’s called a bike, it’s the thing I told you about last time, as well as a couple maintenance tools I needed to keep the wheels in proper working order. I’ve got everything written down here so it shouldn’t be too much trouble for you.”

“Having an adventurer that will actually follow instructions is pretty nice, I gotta say,” She mused as she looked through his detailed notes, happy to have that part already done. “All that’s left is to see it in action to be sure it works like you say.”

“What, in here?”

“Unless you need more space?”

He cast a quick look around the office. It wasn’t cluttered and there was a decent amount of space, so he shrugged and hopped on, doing a quick circle before he stopped. “Happy?”

“Very,” The guild leader’s eyes were shining as she got up to take a closer look at just what he’d made. “It looks like fun, mind if I give it a try?”

“Sure, but I should warn you it can take some practice.”

Completely ignoring his advice, she hopped on without hesitation, skillfully doing a few tight laps around the room.

Okay, what skills did she already possess that made that so easy for her?

<It might just be that her race has an unusually good sense of balance.>

“Alright, this thing is fantastic. Are you going to be selling them at Falk’s shop?” She questioned.

“We’re planning on having a few pre-made but mostly taking special orders. If you’re interested we’ll make you one to suit your size.”

“Then I’ll have to stop by soon. With that out of the way though, let’s get to the reason I asked you both to join me when you got here,” She could see Ben didn’t have a clue on his face while Thera stood beside him, almost shaking with excitement. “I’d like to offer you both a rank 4 promotion quest.”

“Absolutely!”

“Pass.”

“Ben!” Thera yelled in exasperation.

“What? I’ll still help you out if you want to take it, I don’t personally want to rank up any more than I already have.”

Ceselee sat and watched their interaction, chuckling as she did. “As amusing as it is to see an adventurer who doesn’t want to raise their rank, you aren’t getting much of a choice. Adventurers aren’t given money to hunt just to take care of monsters in the area you know. The entire system is built around the idea of incentivising people to get stronger, if you don’t actively work to raise your rank, you don’t get the rewards. Of course, if you just don’t feel like doing a quest for it, there’s no issue with that. You can continue doing the regular ones you’d take, it would just mean instead of ranking up immediately you do it in maybe half a year.”

“Mmh,” He still wasn’t thrilled. He knew ranking up came with responsibility, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to deal with it. Unfortunately on the other hand, he did need to make use of the guild. Their archive was the best place in town to learn about the resources in the area, and it also had books on the various magic branches he would use to study with on occasion since they were geared more towards the standard ways magic was used in the world, something his god was less familiar with.

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“Don’t be so glum about it, ranking up comes with other perks too. At rank four you are officially recognised as a proper adventurer so the guild helps you out in a variety of ways. In your case, we could arrange to have books sent out here for you at a far lower cost than we could give you as a member of the craftsman’s guild, though the specific books we could get our hands on would be different and more focused towards adventuring. Aside from that though, one of the biggest perks is getting to be an adventurer as a job.”

“The issue is I have no interest in this being my job.”

“I’m talking about for your status. Aside from the benefit of all of your skills and aptitudes getting a minor bonus across the board, it’s also a class of job similar to soldier or some leadership type jobs that merges your experience pool with your companions.”