Tsaimath
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Chapter 129
🕑 Added 2019-04-11 16:31:58 +0000 UTC
After entering into Yaksha, we moved further into the town and I wondered if there was any sense or order to the layout. The buildings around us seemed to be warehouses and the buildings behind them might be residential houses, not that I could really tell. The buildings had solid wooden walls, with only a few, small windows and a single, large door each. The buildings on the outskirt had even larger doors, reminiscent of barn-doors, almost as if they were used to let wagons inside but I was unsure. Maybe it was to let hunters carrying game inside to be processed, making it the butcher’s buildings.
The way further into the town was not so much marked as a road or footpath, I think Sigmir simply followed the trampled snow to find her way. It seemed to work, as we soon were on the central square, which I believed to be the market square.
The market square gave me something I had lacked before, perspective for Mundus. I had believed that Sigmir, standing about two meters and twenty tall, was in the upper reaches of sapient beings in this world, when measuring height. Most sapients I had seen had been between my own diminutive height and her towering size, with a few bear-beastman in Yari standing slightly taller than her, making the height distribution relatively similar to the real world.
On the market square, I gained that perspective, showing me just how wrong I had been. There were a few groups of different beings, giving me a wider picture of the races of Mundus and reading about them had not prepared me for seeing them directly. The few dwarves were unsurprising, I had seen Thekk in Neyto and while there were differences, they were not striking. On the other hand, I doubt that anything could have prepared me adequately to see my first centaur, there was a difference between knowing that a centaur was a human torso, growing out of a horse-body and a whole different pony to see just that.
There were six of them and even the smallest, a woman, was comfortably able to look Sigmir into the eyes, with her horse-body’s back being roughly eye-level with me. The biggest, on the other hand, towered over Sigmir, just like Sigmir towered over me, I might have bowed down a little to pass below his belly but not a lot. Not that I would voluntarily try that, I was not that reckless. But his horse-back was easily at Sigmir’s shoulders and the human torso went up from there.
It was quite sobering, seeing the immense physical differences. I wondered just how the game was able to keep things in balance, after all a body that size had to have a corresponding strength, allowing for huge advantages for a centaur. A second thought made me realise that the strength was mostly useless, bound in the lower-horse body, which would allow them to carry or pull large loads, but the deliverable strength, using weapons, should be similar to a human of the same size on a mount. So, a permanently mounted, perfected synchronized with their mounts, cavalry, probably the best cavalry on Mundus. But that was not purely an advantage, I truly wanted to witness a centaur trying to climb a cliff or use a ladder, the mental image alone cured me of any idea that their bodies were a true advantage for them.
Seeing the huge bodies gave the architecture I had wondered about before some perspective, with beings that might want into a house easily standing three meters tall, they needed the higher doors and high ceilings.
And between those extremes, there were others, some that I believed to be beastman of different flavours, others that seemed to be furred humans with tusks, reminding me of artist renditions of caveman but I was guessing that they were some sort of cold-resistant orcs, they looked very similar to the orcs I had seen in videos, just covered in fur.
“That should be the adventurer’s guild. We should register there.” Adra said, gesturing to a rather small building at the edge of the square. The door was sized similar to the barn-doors I had seen on the houses on the edge of town, what I had believed to be warehouses, and above the door was a sign with a boot burned in. I wondered why the so called Adventurer’s Guild was using a boot as their sign, it seemed slightly strange. But at the same time, what but their mobility was connecting adventurers, if they used a specific weapon, it would exclude far too many, similarly with some sort of symbol for magic or the various gods.
“Yes, they should be able to point us to a tanner to sell the furs we have and maybe to an inn. We need some coin.” Sigmir stated, reminding us that we might leave the exclusively barter-driven economy of the wilds. We had skinned the various wolves when we had time, but those furs would only give little coin. I was slightly leery of selling the big, black wolves fur, just in case my ritual had left some sort of magical residue on it, but if we needed the money, so be it.
We walked over to the guild, a few beings on the square looking over curiously, but nobody approached us. I stayed in Sigmir’s shadow as much as possible, using it to help my magic conceal myself. In addition, I tried to use what Rai had told me about using the Stealth-skill itself to hide in plain sight. It was far less powerful, possibly because I was not yet used to it, but it helped. I had used it mostly passively before, but now I tried to actively use my stamina to fuel it. It was a strange sensation, not completely like my magic-usage but still similar.
Adra pushed open the door to the Adventurer’s Guild and we entered the dim building, only kept alight by the limited light shed by a couple of candles and a burning fire-place. The building was divided by a sturdy counter, behind which a strangely shaped female beastman sat. She had some tan fur and an almost pinched face, making me think of a snout, with two small horns protruding from her forehead, curling backwards. She looked up, looking us over as we stood for a moment, taking the ambience in.
The mental image I had of an Adventurer’s Guild before, it was now shattered. I had imagined a raucous bar, filled with rough man, ready to do violence, prone to fight and assert dominance. Next to the bar, a small counter, allowing for a beautiful attendant, who was chased by all single males and regularly fought over, to hand out advice and quests for the would-be adventurers.
The reality was different. There was no bar. There were no permanent patrons. The atmosphere reminded me of some government-office building crossed with a graveyard, it was that fun. The female beastman behind the counter looked plainly bored, not all that excited of having new people in her domain. Her demeanor reminded me of the woman working the admissions-office at school, only without the perm. But her horns made up for that.
Adra walked to the counter, speaking up. “Greetings. We would like to register as Adventurers.”
“Oh, great, more Travellers. Let me guess, you have no idea how the guild works?” She asked, projecting an aura of supreme annoyance. It made me wonder how many Travellers she had inducted, there couldn’t be that many, could there? The third wave had started some time ago, but still, that meant there were only some hundred-thousand Travellers, spread all over the globe. She continued before any of us was able to answer. Not that it would have changed anything, we needed an explanation.
“The guild gives two types of quests. Normal Quests and Bonded Quests. Anyone can take any normal quest, if you overestimate your ability and die, it’s no skin off our back. Bonded Quests can only be taken by proven guild members of good standing, people we know are powerful enough to fulfill them.” She said, in the monotone voice of someone who had given the same information hundreds of times.
“When you first register, you are given a Guild-Card, it lists shows your name and Guild Officials can inscribe informations into it, using magic.” Hearing that, my mind instantly went to possibly studying the card, finding out how it worked and using it to my advantage.
“The card is tamper-proof and we will know if it has been screwed around with. So, don’t try. I know the look on your face, elf, you are one of those magical types that needs to sniff out every little secret, aren’t you?” She looked straight at, and through, me, obviously unimpressed by my concealment. I felt my cheeks flush with a blush, at her very accurate assessment and the chuckles from Sigmir and Adra. At least Rai had been able to keep his amusement to himself, not shaming his master.
“Now, little elf, why don’t we start with registering you?”
