The Quantum Wanderer

The girl in the group place her hand on his shoulder.

“Don’t worry Tar.  Let’s look for the next good one.”

They started going to the board.  I turned back to Rose.

“The job, 5 gold.  The shooting horn, 2 gold.  Two plated rhino horns, 1 gold.  A plated rhino pelt… Let me see…”  She examined it.  “Mint condition, 3 gold.  Do you have the gem as well?  Do you want to sell it?”

“Nope, I will keep the gem.”

“That is… “ She started counting on her fingers.  When she finished, she was impressed.  “Eleven gold.”  She pulled a book from under the counter, and wrote some stuff in it, and asked me to sign on the right.  There were four lines for me to sign, one describing the job, and the other ones were the parts bought.  I signed all of them, and she handed me the cash.

“You’re lucky you’re not a farmer…” and laughed.

“How come?”

“Well, farmers pay the fifth.  That means that everything they sell, they give a fifth in taxes to the city.”

“Why don’t adventurers pay?”

“Because they are really wanted everywhere.  You have basically two kinds, the weak ones that are fighting to survive, and the strong ones that make a lot of money.  You’re apparently one of the strong ones.  The nobles want as many adventurers as possible.  They are a way to keep the monsters at bay without using soldiers.  The weak ones need some leeway until they get stronger.  And the stronger ones, if they get taxed, they simply move to a place where they don’t get taxed.  They are in high demand everywhere.  By the way, I am starting to prepare supper.”

“Sure, thanks.”

I went up to my room, changed clothes to something a little more comfortable, did a quick sponge bath, and came back down.

I looked at the board, it didn’t have that many quests.  I found one, a horned rabbit control to the north.  They had become a plague, they need to have the numbers culled.  It was a two large copper for a whole rabbit, not just the proof of death.  Well, why not?  Perhaps I could find something that would help me find them.  Specially now that I had levelled up, my mana control increased and the mana available was a lot higher, it had some potential.

I looked at the party that was on the counter earlier, they were sitting on a table.  Apparently they were going to get the job for the plated rhino.  I felt just a little bad for them.  I called Rose, told her to give me an ale and told her to give them some rounds, and put it on my tab.  Each ale was 1 large copper.  Apparently booze is expensive everywhere, but I had made so much money, that a couple of silver coins were not going to bankrupt me.  I sat down and starting drinking my ale, relaxing a bit.

She took the 3 ales.  They were a very large guy, I guess it was Tar, was wearing their common dress style, a pair of long pants, a dress shirt with a v cut that went way down.  The woman was the one that had talked to him previously.  She was a bit more toned than the average woman of Earth, but not overly so.  She wore a long dress, with a V shaped neckline as well, though not so low.  She had ample breasts, and her arms, shoulders and back were showing.  The third person in the party had a kind of a hoodie on, I couldn’t see much of his face.

Rose placed the ales on the table, they talked something to her, and she responded and pointed at me.   I smiled, and put the cup, hoping the universal gesture for cheers would be really universal.

They gestured me to come to the table, moving around so the fourth chair was free.  Human relationships are not my strong side, it has always been math, but let’s try.  I got to close, and sat down.

“Hi”

“Hi”, “Hey”, “Hello” they said.

“I am Marcelo.  How are you guys?”

The woman was the one to answer.

“Hi, I am Lu, this big bear to my right is Tar, and this guy here is Aeson.  We are known as Requiem Warriors.”

“Requiem Warriors?  How did you guys choose this name?”

Tar answered that one.  “It is a manly’s name, right?  Like we bring the deaths of our enemys!!!”

Lu rolled her eyes, Aeson just stayed silence.

Tar continued, “How was the hunt for the plated rhino?  We were thinking of actually get in touch with another team to hunt it.  Their leather is really hard to pierce.  It is generally used for armor, and good, expensive one.”

“Well, I kind of took it by surprise, together with some strategies…  Some of my weapons did not survive.  Part surprise, part trap.  Not really an easy hunt, though.”

They were satisfied with the answer.

“But still, congratulations, “ Lu said, “ it still is an awesome accomplishment.”

“Thanks.  What quest did you guys get next?”

Lu again answered, “We are getting an escort job to the baronate capital.”

“Cool, how big is that city?”

“A lot larger than this one.  Many more quests in the guild as well.  The cost of living is a little higher, but there are a lot more things to do as well.  Here you basically only have one of each, one guild, one metalwork shop, one pharmacy, one leather shop…  That makes stuff a bit pricey.”

I had no idea on the prices of goods in general here.  I was learning, but I didn’t ask.  Anyway, I am sure that Andrew was considered ‘local’, and the wares were a better price for him than some visiting adventurers that no one knew.

Lu said that she was going to restroom, and went out.  I continued chit-chatting with them, they were telling me how the roads were, the amount of bandits.  Of course, adventurers alone would probably not really be in too much risk, since they would pose a high risk and a low reward.  Merchants, on the other hand…

I saw Lu coming back, she talked something with Rose, and came to our table.  She sat down, and nodded lightly to Tar and to Aeson.

“Marcelo, would you like to join our team in that work?  It is not going to pay as well as your previous job did, but we could use the talent.”

“What are you guys escorting?”

“A couple of carts of a merchant.  He is using cheap looking carts so as to not attact attention.”

“When are you leaving?”

“In about 7 days, in the morning.  Meanwhile, we are staying in the guild.”

“What is the pay?”

“We are prepared to offer you a gold piece.  Most of the food for the travel is going to be hunted on the way, but we are taking some dry bread and cheese that we can eat if we are in an area that has no game.”

“Ok, it is a deal.”

Rose came out with our food.  Since they were also staying in the inn, they were getting food included in the tab as well.

We ate and talked sometime, after which I went over to Rose, and told her to put all the ale on my account.  She told me that their ale bill was 21 large coppers.  I was kind of amazed, but the big guy could really  drink.  I agreed to it.  I asked her if I could trust them, she said that she didn’t have any bad news about them.  That was the best she could do for most people.  I looked at the table, and Lu and Aeson were trying to carry Tar up the stairs as well.  I waited until their noise was gone, and went to my room to sleep.

Sleep came easy.

I woke up the next day with Rose knocking on the door to let me know breakfast was ready, and that I would loose it if I did not go down.

I put on the armor and the bag I had used previously across my body and went downstairs.

I sat down and ate it, another stew, and now some cheese and hard bread.  The hard bread wasn’t so much of an issue, now that I had more strength than an average farmer.  I asked Rose where I could find a larger bag, and she told me to visit the leather store.

I went there.

“Heyyy!”

“I am here at the back.  Come around the house.”

I went there, and saw a lot of leather stretched on some sort of mechanism, drying in the sun.  It had a very sharp smell.  Perhaps that was the reason why this was kind of distanced from the rest of the village.

As I got there, I asked him,

“Hi, do you happen to have some large bag, where I could carry stuff?”

“I do, but nothing magical.”

“Magical?”

“Yes, they can hold more stuff they should be able to.  Bigger on the inside than outside.”

“Do you know how they are made?”

“Not really, sorry.  I know that there is a lot of magic involved, and the biggest users are the nobles.  There is also the Express Dash company.  They offer the fastest transfer of everything, from letters to some medium sized stuff, but they are really pricey.  They only operate on cities, though.  They don’t have an office here.

“The way they work is by having a network of stables in the cities and some pathways.  When an office receives a package, they trace the city it is going to, studying what is the best path among the cities.  Each city has a relay station, in which the package is place among other things that are going to the next city, and so on.

“Each trip to the cities is made with fresh horses.  When the horse gets in a city, it rests for a couple of days, before going to the next city.

“The horse ridders are some high level former adventurers, so that they can twart monsters and bandits.”

That blew my mind.  I am in a place that absolutely does not prize math, but there is a guy that came up with that idea.

“Who came up with that?”

“I already told you the company name, Express Dash.  They don’t really publicize the name of the inventor of this, but it is known that the company is under Count Colehall patronage.  That means that if you mess up with them, you mess up with the count.”

“Has anyone tried messing up with them?”

“Well, a couple of years ago, they tried to allow for a letter be charged in the destination.  Only letters, though.   You could see the envelope, to check if you would accept the letter or not, and if you did you had to pay.  That did not work as well as they thought, though…  Some people just code messaged the whole thing on the envelope, so that the people receiving the envelope could just read it and not accept the letter… hahaha…  They just gave up on that shortly after.”

 I laughed as well.  I could see that.  Hey, that’s what the place I came from, in Earth, was like.

I got the largest back pack he had.  It was really large.  If fully expanded, its dimensions were around 5 feet on every direction.  It had a lot of straps that allowed it to be tied in a way that it could hold a lot less stuff, and still not be cumbersome.  The fastening was a little cumbersome, but the carrying itself wouldn’t be.

“How much weight can I put on this thing?”

“This is a good leather.  Not a plated rhino, I heard that the guild has just got some, but I don’t know if they are going to sell that to me, but it is bicorn leather.  Very resistant in terms of weight.  I think it can hold around some 500 pounds.”

“Who would carry 500 pounds on their back?”

“Hey, levelling up is free.”  I knew it wasn’t, normal people would have to put their lives on the line to level up this much.  But this was what I was looking for.  If I had this before, I would be able to have brought a lot of plated rhino meat.

“How much is it?”

“1 gold.”

“Please, man…  Or should I tell Andrew that you’re trying to skin his friends…?” And I made a face so he would know that I wasn’t really serious.

“Ok, ok.  Make it 8 silver.  What do you intend to put in it?”

“Hum, perhaps some horned rabbits right now?”

“I have something to show you then…”

He showed me some large bags, made of some rough fabric.  They had some rubbery substance applied to them.  They were folded.  He picked one of them, opened all the fasteners in the backpack, and placed it inside.  It fit the inside perfectly.

“What is that?”

“Well, if you put dead animals inside, you are going to get it dirty, right? So this removable insider is made of rough cotton, with some rubber tree resin applied to it.  It is reasonably cheap, one big copper per bag.  That way, if you put something smelly and the smell just doesn’t go away, you don’t loose the back pack.”

“What can you do on that?”

“Come on, I am already doing Andrew price on this.”

“Sure, fine.  Give me twenty, and let’s make it a gold coin.”

He started counting on his fingers, to check if I wasn’t leading him on.  I gave him the gold coin, and got the back pack and insiders.

I left the other insiders in my bedroom, and went on to hunt the horned rabbits.

I went north, and walked a long way, all the way past the farms.  The horned rabbits lived in the forest, but the problem was that they were starting to go after the farmers plantations.  The farmers did not really have a lot of resources to fence the plantations in.  The only part of the village inside the wall served to protect people, not crops.

As I got close to the forest, I attempted something new…  I created very thin strands of mana, and tried to investigate the area around me.  I closed my eyes, and let my conscience roam a little bit.  I could sense everything around me.  It brought a whole bunch of emotions as well.  Some peace, some fear, some hunger…  And if I focused on something, I could actually sense the animal, almost see it in my mind.  To test this, I sensed a plant that was behind a tree, just to make sure it wasn’t my imagination, and I ‘saw’ the format of the leaves.

I went around the tree, and it was there.

Nice.

I expanded my senses again, and I heard the noise of some cawing.  I looked up, and a lot of crows were on the trees, kind of around me.

I looked up, and they standed just there.  Well, they don’t really look menacing.  Perhaps if I leave a horned rabbit for them they can leave me alone.  Although, there were a lot of them around…  On Earth, I always had a soft spot for crows and ravens stories about how intelligent they are.

I sensed around, and felt some smaller animals, and a bigger one.  Focusing on them, I could see that the small animals were actually 5 horned rabbits and 2 wild rats.  The bigger one was a boar.  Humm…  Let’s make the buggars happy.  Yes, I am a hypocrite, but

I got close to the boar, I wanted to do a little experiment.  Specially now that I was in a higher level, it might be easier.  I mixed the sanctuary spell with the soul absorption spell, and directed it to the boar.  It worked, but the moment I activated it, the boar got startled.

I then shot it in the head with the microwave maser. 

It worked.  That feeling…  One more level, not bad.

I went there, and removed the gem, hung it on a tree by its back feet with a rope, skinned it.  Once done, threw it towards the trees with the crows.

The whole thing took less than I expected.  I left the birds feasting on the boar, and started looking for the horned rabbits.    Even though I was going to hunt a lot of them, it wasn’t particularly worried by the experience they would provide.

In order to keep things more on the down and low, I decided to use the bow and arrows.  It was a loot easier to explain an arrow to the side than the brain just heated up from the inside.

I enhanced my vision, hands and brain and started it.  One, two, three, four.  The fifth horned rabbit actually ran.  I went there, recovered the arrows and placed the carcasses inside the back pack.

I looked back to where I was, the boar was already half eaten.  Those guys were hungry.  I kept on it, going deeper in the forest.  In some hours, I got 32 horned rabbits.  When I look up the tree, again the crows.  I looked at the boar, it was mostly eaten.  I just shrugged and went back to the guild.

I got my reward, the six silver and 4 large coppers.  I was happy, this would actually already pay for my stay for the days until we went on scorting trip.  And I could get a couple more horned rabbits, in the ‘horned rabbit war’.

I decided to take a couple of days off, and I used them to meet of the people in the village, as well as perform the edge enhancement on a knife I had.  I didn’t do it on the whole knife so that I could use it in front of other people.  It made for a very sharp knife, though not as resistant as my sword.

I also used that time to walk around the farms.  The very outer layer of farms were the ones containing some cattle.  Apparently, the male older ones.  Together with the cattle, they had a lot of dogs.

Then there was an intermediate layer, of farming the land, and the inner portion had the young and milking cattle.  The farmers that were working the land were very attentive to their surroundings.  It was noticeable that they were not working relaxedly.

I inquired about why things were the way they were, saying that I had come from a city, and they said that it was like that to try to add some security.  If there was a monster attack, it would hit first the cattle, and be guarded by dogs.  That would give time for the farmers to retreat into the village.  And the females and younglings among the cattle took longer to manage into the village.

After those two days walking around, I kind of depleted my ‘social battery’, so I decided to do some additional hunting.  This time, close to the horned rabbits there was a pack of wolfes.  They tried to face me, but when I killed the front one with a fireball, the other ones ran scared.

I skinned it, took the gem, and gave the rest of the carcass to the crows.  I was getting used to their company by now.  Apparently, they were also getting used to my company.

I got another 35 horned rabbits, and went back to the guild.  Seven silvers.  Rose thanked me, she said that I was one of the top contributors in the war against the horned rabbits, she told me that the farmers appreciated it.  Specially because it was kind of a cheap job.

Of course, all the food the guild was serving was horned rabbit.  Couldn’t really blame them.

Finally, it was the day to leave.

We met in front of the guild, there were two carts being pulled by two horses each.  I talked to the Requiem Warriors, and we chit-chatted for a little bit.  We placed a tent gem in the second cart, and turned it on, so that monsters were not too curious about it, and we joined the first cart.

The dangers were different for the first and second cart; a monster attack would probably happen on the second cart; a bandit attack would probably happen on the first.  Bandits would stop the small caravan, in order to seize all goods at once.  Monster repelling gems would not work on bandits, so this was the safest formation, according to Tar.

As we hit the road, past the farms, there were a lot of crows on the border of the forest.  With the cart swinging, from one side to the other on the uneven road, Tar murmured:

“I don’t like that; crows are bad omens.”

“Don’t be so superstitious, Tar.  That’s just children’s tales to keep children inside the house, “ intervened Lu.

“I kind of like those rascals.  We have some stories of very intelligent animals, and some of them are crows and ravens.”

We stayed with our attention focused on the front.  Our worst scenario was always going to be bandits.  Humans are always scarier than monsters, because of their unpredictability.  Monsters were killers, but apparently humans could just be crueler than monsters.  At least that’s what Lu was telling me.

 As I was paying attention to her explanation, I get slapped on the face.  Kind of hard.  Then I look at my lap, there is a dead horned rabbit.

I look to the top of the cart, there is crow.  I craws once, and fly away.

Everyone looked at me.  Tar just couldn’t resist, “You like them, they like you…  Is it marriage bells I am hearing?”.  We all laughed.

That night we had horned rabbit stew.  Again.  I remembered the scene, I couldn’t help but smile.