Luca DR
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Accidentally summoned 13
🕑 Added 2024-02-06 23:18:57 +0000 UTC13 – Problems at the threshold
Ishrin was waiting in the common room at the ground floor of the guild, where a veritable mass of adventurers dressed in all sorts of queer and colorful attires were busy showcasing the goods most of their hard-earned money usually went to buying: alcohol to fill their bellies. A curious example of circular economy where they got paid by the guild and then paid the guild back at the bar. The creatively dressed adventurers seemed to not mind that it was early morning, and that day drinking was something that was usually frowned upon.
Especially if they need to go out and do dangerous jobs afterwards.
The moment Melina appeared from around the corner of the winding stairs, the room fell silent. It lasted a heartbeat or two before turning into a low murmur, and the things that were said about her Ishrin could pick up were not particularly pleasant. They ranged from outrage at the fact that she spoiled their ‘hunt’ a few days prior, to complaints about her incompetency and slow reaction to the current ‘emergency’, whatever that was. Ishrin decided that he didn’t care.
She approached him, took him to a secluded corner of the room, and handed him the counterfeit token that would become his public identity for the foreseeable future. All this among murmurs and gossip, but his rusty social skills and deceptively old mental age allowed him to shrug them off effortlessly.
I have been the subject of so much trash talks from cultivators, mages and other ritualists for my ‘ideas’ that hearing these guys think I’m banging the guild master doesn’t even compare.
Actually…
“Do I have something on my face?” The foxgirl in question asked.
Ishrin coughed, retrieving his lost consciousness fragment that had wandered off along with the rest of his mind.
“Nope. Looking good. Thank you for not giving me a stupid name by the way.”
“There was no mention of your name in the guild communications,” she said with a shrug, “so I decided to let you keep yours. Keep eyeing me like you did earlier and I might change it to Marvin or something.”
“Loud and clear!” Ishrin said with a chuckle and a mock salute.
At least she looks less tense now. Yay to being a clown.
After that, they went back to talking business. Melina explained to him how the quests were supposed to work, how to claim rewards and what to do in case he missed a deadline. Which was… a pain. Better not to miss guild deadlines.
A cool feature of the counterfeit token was that it had some sort of signature built inside it that would let him access some usually rank-restricted features, as long as he was slick about it. It might fool the automated systems, but it would not fool real people watching him enter rooms he should not enter.
Finally, Melina left to do some guild work that could tangentially be related to the source of the smell, smoke and ash choking the city. She took Lisette with her, leaving Ishrin alone in the guild but metaphorically reborn. As a newly minted D-rank adventurer. She couldn’t do any higher, not while he was still at Tier 1, which was okay for him. He didn’t plan to stay this weak much longer.
Already he had gathered some materials from the forest that would allow him to perform a couple rituals for his foundation. All he lacked were magical cores, but he had abstained from venturing too deep inside the forest for security reasons. Reasons that were becoming weak enough, in light of the lack of threats detected, to perhaps allow for a reconnaissance mission.
But first… now that Melina was gone and he couldn’t freeload from her any longer, he needed money. Luckily his new token allowed him to gain access to what amounted, at least to him, to rather easy sources of money. Quests.
The quest board was, as Melina explained, a magical artifact. It kept track of the nearby guild tokens in the area, of the natural resources of the place, its dangerous monsters, the needs of the locals and their requests, and produced the best set of possible quests taken from the general pool for the adventurers of the town. It was a marvelous concept.
It reminded Ishrin of Mekano’s world of data and AI, once again showing how magic and technology could sometimes converge into the same things – although with different means of implementation.
There were slips of paper hanging on the quest board, full of bold letters and colors, envelopes lying on a table sometimes with names on them, their sealed contents addressed to a particular adventurer or team. There was one that caught his attention, and inside he found a wonderfully written poem, the letters embossed with gold on the rough paper, small drawings and illustrations dotted the lines and the empty spaces like a grove of trees keeping watch over the secret words.
The glade was still in the morning air,
And the owl and the dove rested at peace
For the ring of light watched the heir
His son and his niece
Whomst among your own
Who went far and wide
Can find the lost spawn
And bring them back to light?
Ishrin frowned. It was a wonderful poem, but since the main function of the text should be to illustrate what he had to do to complete the quest, its danger rating and its pay, it was quite nebulous. Still, it intrigued him enough that he decided to keep it. Another one just like it appeared as soon as he pocketed the paper, as always happened with non-specific quests that anyone could take.
Ishrin scanned the board again in search of more fungible material. He settled for a slip of quality but not impossibly expensive paper hanging at chest height.
D-Rank Quest: Tier 3 monster core needed.
I need a Tier 3 monster core (any attunement) for weapons crafting to be delivered ASAP to the Guild, or directly to my shop in Noctis for a 10% bonus. Address below.
Reward: 12 Gold pieces.
This one looked promising. Enough to cover his basic expenses without requiring too much work, and then he could take the rest of the day off to hunt for monsters in the forest and maybe explore Noctis a bit more. He remembered seeing a nice plot of land squeezed between a fruit orchard and a large field of golden crops right outside the walls, rocky and not fit for agriculture. Perhaps he could buy it and build a secret lair for his rituals?
Perhaps he was thinking too far ahead. For now, he consulted a map, helped by a young clerk who very kindly explained the local geography, and headed out towards the exit of the guild. His destination was a forest. Coincidentally, it was the very same forest he had first appeared in when he arrived in this world, but thanks to his spells the trip there would take only a few hours.
Liù was hiding in his pocket, and she sometimes chirped in protest, but always calmed down after a few pats and cuddles. She had been relegated to the pocket due to paranoia, expressed by Melina herself. She was the cautious one for a change.
“Just be patient for a little while longer! You can let loose a bit as soon as we are out of town, okay? I know how you feel… Been feeling pretty restless myself, stuck in the city for so many days.”
Unfortunately, Ishrin’s trip to the forest ran into problems before he even set foot outside the guild.
“Not so fast!”
Suddenly a burly man clad in dirty heavy armor stood in his way. He felt Liù tense up immediately, darting out of his pocket and hiding in his hair, pulling at loose strands that had escaped his ponytail hard enough to hurt. Ishrin caught the man’s eyes as they followed the pixie and grew wide with greed, and his own eyes narrowed in response.
A quick scan told him that this man could be trouble, but not too much trouble. The whole city was full of weakling if one discounted Melina and Lisette. Bearing this in mind, Ishrin decided he could let some hint of his old self slip through.
“Hello? The fuck you doing, eyeing my pixie like that? Get out of the way before it turns nasty.”
“You’re the new D-Tier that’s doing all sorts of queer stuff around town aren’t you?” The man asked.
Ishrin chuckled. “Don’t try to speak above your status, it clearly isn’t working.” He scoffed. “Queer stuff. What if youwere the queer one?”
At that moment, after having apparently gathered enough courage, Liù flew out of her nest of hair and right into Ishrin’s face, shook her head furiously while pointing at the guy with an angry scowl, then at herself, then back at him and then scurried away. She tinkled like an enraged little bell.
“Look. Barely a second and you already managed to upset her. Apologize, and be quick.”
The man scoffed, continuing on as if Ishrin had said nothing. “I know your type. Bribe a couple of people here, sleep around with others there. Then you think you can push your weight around thanks to your new rank. It isn’t like that here.”
“Knock it off, Goddard.” Someone shouted from the back, where a group of guys was drinking at a small table. “Or his girlfriend will knock your teeth out for sure.”
A roar of laughter erupted. Goddard didn’t like it, because his face turned a deep red as the veins in his neck bulged from strain.
“Shut up dickheads.” He turned to face Ishrin. “You! You act all big and strong, but I can feel how weak you are. You do know that your girl isn’t here to help you, do you?”
“I think you got the wrong idea, mate.” Ishrin said. He thought he sounded cool enough, adding a little sway like that character Mekano had showed him on TV.
“I offer you a deal. You give me that little fairy that you snatched.” Goddard spat, not impressed. “And I let you live.”
Liù was trembling.
Come on, Liù, I’m not going to sell you off! How can you even think that?
“I’m sorry,” he feigned ignorance. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“That creature!” The man said. “I saw it right now. Don’t play dumb with me. I saw it the other night, almost caught it if it weren’t for that bitch guild master. It’s mine.”
The other night? Liù, we are going to have a talk after this.
“Oh!” Ishrin said theatrically. “You mean the pixie. Not the fairy. It’s radically different.”
“Give it to me. Now.”
“You are clearly drunk,” he said, “so I won’t hold a grudge or anything. But back off before things get—”
Suddenly there was a fist flying towards Ishrin’s face. A rather fast fist, courtesy of the tyranny of rank that not even he could escape. Despite dodging instincts honed during his very, very long life on Eternia, the fist brushed against Ishrin’s cheek. It felt like a brick grazing his skin, and what little contact happened was enough to make him bleed.
Meanwhile, Goddard’s drunk status meant that he couldn’t keep his balance well enough. Not expecting to score only a glancing hit, he overextended himself and ended up almost falling face-first to the ground right outside the guild double doors.
“Listen,” Ishrin kicked him and sent them man sprawling to the ground. “You—” but could not finish the sentence. The man got up and threw himself at him.
Goddard unsheathed his sword and began to swipe at him with sluggish, unpolished movements. They were still dangerous, considering the stats behind them.
Ishrin sighed. Guess I’ll have to waste mana today. Minor haste. Minor strengthen. Minor protection.
He glowed for a fraction of a second, then the world was just a tiny bit slower. But it was he who had gotten faster. The two danced in the cramped space, now much more evenly matched, and the punches Ishrin delivered were enough to dent the cheap armor and make the adventurer stagger for a while. In his enraged state, Goddard had not realized that a Tier 1 was toying with him.
Meanwhile, Ishrin was thinking. Goddard’s sword was not enchanted, his guild token put him at E-Rank, which meant that he wasn’t even able to use his Tier 3 cultivation decently enough to push his rank to D.
How to deal with such a person? He clearly wasn’t a good guy by any means. He was untalented, prone to rage, a day drinker…
For some reason Ishrin despised day drinkers.
Unfortunately his machinations were cut short. Liù, who had been witnessing the whole exchange, was unfamiliar with the idea of someone toying with another person. In her little eyes, the fight had been going on for far longer than she was comfortable with, especially since her loved summoner was involved in it. She began to light up.
“No, no! Liù!”
An amount of adrenaline Goddard could have never caused by himself immediately flooded Ishrin’s bloodstream. If Liù attacked here, aiming right at the inside of the guild…
Forget being hunted for his knowledge. This was much worse.
