Chapter Fifty-Seven

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Everette explained the way the quest picking system works to you with simple words and big gestures. You suspect it’s because he’s touched in the head. Poor Wuffles, having such a boring summoner.

“So,” you say to recapitulate. “For some reason some metals are more important than others, and so you decided to use that to rank the difficulty of these quest things.”

“Uh, yeah, exactly,” Everette says. “Bronze, then silver, then gold. Each rank is more dangerous, but also pays better.”

“What about the other metals?” you ask.

“Well, they’re not part of the ranking.”

“Why not?”

“Well, the others aren’t as, ah, rare?” Everette says, though it sounds as if he’s asking you a question.

You turn to Abigail because she knows lots of things. “What’s the rarest metal? And what’s the most common one?”

Your Abigail hums a little as she thinks. “Iridium, I think. It’s a very rare reagent and it is a metal. As for the most common, that would have to be aluminium, though it is very difficult to work without the right spells. Iron is probably the most commonly used metal.”

You nod and spin back to face Everette. “Where are the Iridium level ranks? And why aren’t the lowest ranked quests aluminium?”

The boy stutters and gestures a little, then shakes his head. “There aren’t any others,” he says. “Just bronze, silver and gold. That’s it. And of those, we can only take the bronze, which is all they have here anyway.”

“I never actually thought about it,” Abigail says. “But they really should change the system to some sort of rank that doesn’t correspond to a metal. What if large gold deposits are discovered and the value of gold decreases, or a mage finds a gold-substitute for most spellwork. It has happened to some other uncommon reagents before, it could happen to gold. Then the Adventuring club would be stuck with an antiquated system that no longer makes any sense.”

“Yes, well,” Everette says. “Be that as it may, gold is worth more than silver right now. And there are neither gold or silver options on this particular board.”

You’re beginning to suspect that he might be irritated. “Okay, so which quest offers the most to eat?”

“The rewards are all listed at the bottom,” he says before pointing to some numbers below the quest details. “They pay in Five Peaks Fiat.”

“So the quests that are labelled with gold don’t actually pay in gold?” Abigail asks.

Everette presses his face into his hands.

“They pay in money, but I want stuff to eat,” you explain.

“You can trade money for food,” Everette says and Abigail pats your shoulder which probably means he’s right.

So the optimal options, then, are obviously those where you get to eat something, then make lots of money to get to buy even more stuff to eat. Or maybe there are quests where they’ll need special sorts of tentacles, or that would allow you to learn new ways to use your tentacles like with Charlotte’s sword.

“There are two of them that are right next to each other,” Abigail says as she points to two different sheets. “One is to scout out the location of a bandit camp. The other... oh my, there’s a wild troll on the loose.”

“What’s a troll?” you ask.

“It’s a fearsome beast,” Everette says. “Strong and difficult to fight, with a thick hide and just enough brains to be clever.”

You decide that Everette is an idiot and turn to Abigail for a better answer. “It’s a very big monster,” she says. “They were made by a mad eugenicist hundreds of years ago to fight in a war. They’re very strong and quite large.”

She said words that mean ‘big’ twice, which means it must be a good snack. “Okay, let’s go eat the troll and then the bandits.”

“We only need to scout out the bandit camp,” Everette says, then, after seeing your blank look, he explains more. “We just need to know where they are and then report that.”

“They’ll be in my tummy,” you say. A tentacle reaches out and plucks the two notices from the board and then smacks them onto Everette’s chest. “Do the thing with the papers. We’ll get the others.”

You and Abigail move over to the table where Charlotte looks quite satisfied and Daphne is wearing a very flat, very unimpressed look. Next to her is your third portion of breakfast, all piled up in a big mound of eggs and ham and teeny tiny potato cubes that you dig into with two forks.

“You took a quest,” Daphne says.

“No,” Abigail says, and for a moment Daphne relaxes. “We took two.”

“Damn it, Abi,” Daphne says. “I can’t believe you drag me into these things.”

“You could stay at the inn,” Abigail says.

“And leave you out there without me to look over you? No way. You might get hurt, or injured or lost,” Daphne says. It’s a fair point and the same reason you’d never let Abigail go do dangerous things without you there to eat them.

“I’ll go get dressed. This sounds like a great excuse to take a nice long walk outdoors and enjoy some sunshine,” Charlotte says.

“And we get to eat things,” you add after swallowing the last of your eggs.

The girls all look at you, then as one start shaking their heads. They obviously don’t know what it’s like to go eons without anything new to eat.

“Right. Let’s all get our things and meet up outside in a few minutes? I don’t think anything is beyond walking distance, but maybe we can find some farmer or something to give us a ride closer so that we can save ourselves some walking.”

“That sounds passable,” Daphne says. “A gold mark ought to get any one of the locals to drive us anywhere.”

“A gold mark would be more than what we’d make on the quest. Before we split the profits,” Charlotte says.

“I thought we were doing this to pass the time?” Daphne shoots back.

You roll your eyes and lick your plate clean. For all of their talk about being civilised and such, your mortal friends are big on squabbling about silly things.