013: Party

Rain was lying on his bunk reviewing his messages. He had woken to his alarm and walked around the room blasting everyone with purify to drain his mana down to zero before switching to amplified winter. He didn’t plan on rushing for a quest today, so he had returned to his bunk to sort through the pile of experience he had gotten from the massive amount of mana he had used the day before.

Dynamo is so awesome. I’m going to max out intrinsic clarity really fast at this rate. And that will just let me burn mana even faster. I don’t think the higher class experience thing is going to be an issue.

Right, so priorities. Food, money, not dying, all set for now. What… do I want? Power? Fame? To go home?

At the thought of home, Rain felt a hollow sort of ache for his own world. He had no family or close friends, but it was still home. I wonder if anyone will even notice I’m gone… yeah, ok, my boss definitely will. He gets on my case if I am late to the site by five minutes. Other than that though…

Rain sat quietly as his mana regenerated, thinking.

I was…lonely. I was surrounded by people, lost in a sea of them, but how many close conversations have I had in the past year? I was just…existing. Here, here I feel alive.

Looking down at his feet, Rain let himself just drift for a while, lost in the past and uncertain about the future. He sat up, swinging his feet over the side of the bunk.

I… I’m not going home. This world… this is my home now. This is a fresh start. I’m tired of being alone. Tired of being weak and poor. I’ll make my own way, reach out for what I want and work to get it, but I don’t have to do it alone. I need to learn this language and to do that, I need to be around people. I’m going to spend some time in the guild today, or maybe I’ll walk the city. If I can find a party to go on a quest with that would be ideal.

Course set, Rain pulled on his boots and made his way out of the bunkroom and into the noise of the quest hall. He didn’t go to the board; instead, he wandered through the room to watch various groups of adventurers talking and laughing with each other.

Most groups were between three and five people, usually with at least one warrior type and one mage; however, there was a large variation even within the simple archetypes. Some warriors had swords, but there were others with different weapons such as pikes, axes, and hammers. There was even one individual who had made the questionable decision to dual-wield shields.

Solo adventurers were rare. The few that he saw quickly joined up with larger groups. Not all of the adventurers seemed to stay at the guild, many coming in from the front door instead of from the bunkroom. He only saw one other person clearly not in a group: the scarred man he had noticed before. He was hesitant to approach him though. Anyone with that many scars probably wasn’t safe to be around, not because they would be sketchy or anything, but just because it showed a certain lack of an instinct for self-preservation.

Rain picked out the closest person that he had spoken to before and made his way over, intending to ask him about the etiquette of joining an adventuring group. Said person was the mage who had first noticed and taken advantage of his purification aura a few days ago. Rain had picked him out of the crowd by his height and brilliant orange robe, complete with pointy orange wizard hat. Greeting him, Rain had barely started trying to frame his question when he was interrupted by the arrival of two women.

Both were clearly adventurers. One was older, with steel-gray hair and a very serious expression on her face. The younger woman was closer to Rain’s own age, with long brown hair and a cute, up-turned nose. She was wearing a dark blue robe banded with white around the sleeves in contrast to the practical outfit of the older woman, whose clothing was similar to Rain’s own shirt and trousers, except in black. The younger woman was a mage. The staff was a pretty good clue, being the wizardly variety, not the kung-fu master type. Neither the older woman nor the man in the orange robe had a visible weapon.

The older woman had interrupted Rain when she arrived, placing a hand on the orange mage’s shoulder and giving him an impatient look. She motioned to the door, speaking to the man while simultaneously grabbing the collar of the other woman’s robe. The younger woman had been trying to wander off into the crowd, but the older one was having none of it.

The man in the orange robe turned to Rain. He apologized to him, trying to explain that he had to go.

Might as well try.

“Quest?” he asked hurriedly before the man could get away. “Level? Danger? I come?”

“No.”

This was the older woman, not even looking at Rain as she dismissed him out of hand. Turning to the door, she started hauling the younger woman with her, heedless of her attempts to escape.

The orange mage glanced after her, then looked back to Rain, seeming torn. “Wait,” he said to Rain, then hurried after the woman, stopping her with a hand on her shoulder. He leaned in to whisper into her ear, then the two had a quick conversation, glancing over at Rain from time to time. Eventually, the woman sighed and nodded, then went off to retrieve the woman in blue, who had escaped at some point during the conversation.

The man in orange beckoned Rain over. As he approached, the man held out a hand to stop him, then asked a question, raising one bushy eyebrow. He must have been able to read the incomprehension on Rain’s face as he tried again, speaking slower, and using fewer words.

It took him a while to get what the man was trying to explain, but luckily the two women took a few minutes to re-appear and he had time to piece it together.

They are going on a quest, and I can come and help, but I don’t get a share of the reward, whatever that may be. I can live with that. This guy seems pretty cool, and learning about how to be an adventurer is probably more important than money.

Rain noticed the young woman returning from the direction of the tavern carrying a loaf of bread and half a chicken. The older woman was rapidly approaching in her wake, so Rain quickly nodded, accepting the man’s terms.

The man beckoned, then started walking to the door. Rain followed, falling into formation with the two women. The older one ignored him, but the younger one greeted him cheerily with a wave, her mouth full of bread.

She’s pretty cute.

Upon leaving the guild, they stopped by a man sitting on the steps who rose to greet them, giving Rain an appraising look. Rain looked right back at him, noting the full plate armor and two shields propped against the wall near where he had been sitting. Really? This guy is with them? What did I sign myself up for?

The mage in orange spoke to the man briefly. Apparently satisfied with the explanation, the armored man nodded and extended a hand for Rain to shake.

“Carten,” he said, crushing Rain’s fingers in his gauntleted hand.

“Rain,” Rain replied, trying not to wince at the deathgrip. Thankfully Carten released his hand without damaging it. The man in orange then introduced himself as Jamus and pointed at the two women, identifying them as Lavarro and Mahria.

The five of them set off, the older woman, Lavarro, leading the way. As they walked through the city, Jamus attempted to explain the mission, but finding that Rain lacked many of the needed words, this slowly transitioned into an impromptu language lesson.

Lavarro ignored this and led them to a stable just inside the gates where a largish cart was waiting for them. She spoke to the stablehands, who brought out a brown horse and attached it to the cart with a harness. Being from the city, Rain had very little familiarity with horses, so he did his best to stay out of the way.

The cart itself was empty as they rolled out of the city gates, heading north up the river road. Mahria quickly claimed a spot in the back, joined by Jamus, and then Rain, who clambered up with some difficulty. Lavarro was walking in front holding the horse’s lead and Carten was bringing up the rear, seemingly unencumbered by his full plate armor and thick metal shields.

As the cart bounced and jostled down the road, Jamus continued instructing Rain, giving him words and having him repeat them back. He was a good teacher, clear in his explanations and patient with Rain’s mistakes. He was also a skilled artist, which aided matters greatly. Rain found his notebook filling up with hundreds of new words and images labeled with phonetic pronunciations and spellings in the glyphs of the common tongue.

After a few hours of this, Mahria butted her nose in, poking Rain and starting to interrogate him. Jamus waved her off, but she was persistent. Rain, not minding her curiosity, attempted to explain why he didn’t speak common. He told her that he had woken up in a forest, far from his homeland and with no idea how he had gotten there. He refrained from mentioning that he had come from a completely different world, just shrugging when she had asked him how far was ‘far’. He was also cagey on the technical details of his home, hiding behind the language barrier somewhat deliberately.

Rain didn’t have a hard reason for not telling her the truth. Part of it was a desire to fit in, which was much easier if you were just from ‘very far’ instead of ‘another dimension’. The fact that his home was far enough away that he didn’t know any of the local countries or geography was entirely true, and Mahria and Jamus seemed to accept it.

The other part of his evasiveness was, well, paranoia. He didn’t know how he got here, and that meant a person might have brought him to this world, not some natural phenomenon. If they had, they probably had some sort of reason, and Rain wasn’t keen to find out what that reason might be. Blabbing about it with people he just met seemed like a bad idea.

Rain also got his fair share of questions in, though it took quite a while to parse out the answers due to the language barrier. The name of the city that they had left was Fel Sadanis, and it had been independent for the last hundred years or so. Law was kept in the city by the Vigilant Order of Watch Keepers, or simply the Watch, which was a multinational organization dedicated to protecting the people from themselves. The guards and scouts he had seen in the city wearing the shield emblem on their plates belonged to the Watch, which was structured more like a military than the chaotic adventurers’ guild.

From Mahria’s expression as Jamus explained the Watch to Rain, it was clear that she didn’t care for them too much. Jamus seemed indifferent, just giving Rain a few quick pointers about them so he could stay out of trouble.

Entry into the city required a plate from a recognized guild or a special residential pass. There was no offensive magic allowed in the city. The Watch grudgingly tolerated the presence of the adventurers’ guild hall, trusting them to police themselves within the confines of the building. Beyond that, though, if you were caught using dangerous magic in the city, you could be fined or thrown in jail. Mahria explained to Rain that the Watch’s definition of ‘dangerous magic’ included anything that they didn’t understand. From her tone and body language, Rain was sure that she had gotten arrested by them before, but he decided against asking if it had been justified.

Rain’s mana had reached full, so he decided to drain it out with purification. He warned the others so as to not startle them, then concentrated, calling up his aura with both amplify and extend. Jamus smiled appreciatively, but Mahria just looked confused as the white light washed over her. Jamus explained the effect of the aura to her pointing out how the dirt ground into the old boards of the cart was slowly disappearing.

This skill really makes no damn sense. It works fine on dirt, so could I use it to dig a hole? It didn’t seem to affect the ground when Ameliah used it in the forest, just the slime gunk. Maybe it works on the dirt in the cart because it isn’t supposed to be there?

Rain reined in his thoughts and brought his attention back to his companions. Mahria was watching the effect of the aura closely now, her face a wonder of disbelief. Catching on to what was happening, Carten had wandered closer to the cart and into the range of Rain’s aura. Lavarro either hadn’t noticed or didn’t care to investigate whatever it was that Rain was doing.

At level three and with both modifiers applied, Rain couldn’t hold the aura for more than five minutes. Still, by the time he had to drop it, the cart and its occupants were practically spotless. Carten was laughing uproariously at the sight of the horse. It was only three-quarters clean, its head and fore-legs dusty from the road, but the rest looking immaculate and freshly brushed. The aura hadn’t reached far enough from where Rain was sitting, leaving a sharp demarcation on the horse’s back where the effect had ended. Carten apparently thought this was the funniest thing ever from how hard he was laughing.

This was enough to attract Lavarro’s attention. She clucked to the horse, halting it, then inspected the line marking the edge of Rain’s aura.

“What skill was that?” she asked. Rain was elated that he understood her whole sentence.

“Purify,” he replied, smiling.

She looked at Jamus questioningly. Jamus was smiling smugly. Lavarro turned back to Rain, giving him an appraising look.

“Use it,” she commanded.

“Sorry, mana,” Rain replied with a shrug.

“How long?”