The next morning, because I’d stuck with juice all night, I did not have a hangover. Of course, there were other bodily functions I had to take care of from having too much fruit juice. Things best left unsaid.
By the time I reached the Adventurer’s Guild, Murr and Kron were already sitting at a table taking bites out of their breakfast. When they saw me, the pink haired catfolk held up another piece of parchment that listed a quest.
As I sat down, I said, “This one isn't from your family this time?”
He scowled. “Hey. I’m not going to upset the guild master again. Once was enough.”
“Once was too much,” Kron said.
“Also, why go on a mission so soon? I was thinking that we’d take our time leveling.”
Murr smirked. “This is a training mission. One where we test our skills on the difficult foes in order to develop our skills.”
I swallowed. “What is it?”
“We, my friends, are going to collect wild honey from giant bees.”
Kron, with the straightest face I’d ever seen, said, “It sounds like it will bee a good mission.”
We all just looked at him for a second. He took a bite of his food and acted like he hadn’t just randomly thrown a pun out there.
I turned back to Murr and frowned. “Why is that a good training mission?”
“Think about it. What are bees known for... other than honey?”
“Their bees-ness,” Kron said. Once again, the dude didn’t crack a smile.
Murr pointed to the golem and looked at me. “Are we just going to ignore that?”
“What?” the golem asked casually and blinked like he didn’t understand.
I decided to get us back on track. “In terms of combat, they’re known for swarming.”
“Exactly!”
I narrowed my eyes at the rogue. “What are you planning?”
He stared at us, eyes glittering with excitement. “What is a good way to mitigate damage? By avoiding the attack altogether with dodge skills! You, Kron, and myself need better dodge skills, because you aren’t using a shield.”
I winced.
“Hey, don’t think of it as a bad thing. It’s just different, which can be advantageous if we can figure out how to use it right,” Murr said. “If you can’t wield a shield, then we’ll all learn to dodge. And, as a rogue, my dodge skills should be top-notch. Right now, I only have a rank X aura skill and I can’t stand it.”
Kron pushed his dish to the side and stared at me with his blue, glowing eyes. “We were discussing this before you came here. You’re our tank, but that doesn’t mean that you need to carry us on your shoulders. We need to protect and defend ourselves when necessary.”
“Exactly!” Murr looked excited.
I grinned. Somehow, I’d managed to find myself a team that supported each other and compensated for each other’s weaknesses. I’d thought that Kimmi, Bradvin and Dos would have done that for me, but they’d had their own plans. Actually, now that I remembered them, I realized they hadn’t come back to the inn last night. Maybe they’d gone somewhere else?
“So, does everyone have their signed contract?” Murr’s voice pulled me out of my reverie.
Kron placed his parchment on the table in front of Murr. “I’ve already had my family’s lawyer look at it. It’s solid.”
I pulled mine out and handed it to the rogue along with the bag of coins from our first mission. The catfolk split everything in three and handed us each our share. He even took his own share.
“From this point on, we place 15% of everything we earn into the Guild Bank as party funds to pay for things like lodging, food and if we need some extra money to afford better weapons or armor. The rest we’ll split evenly between us,” Murr went over some more of the terms in the contract. Which was just standard for adventurers. “Fortunately, the guild takes the taxes out for us, so we don’t have to worry about that.”
Ak! I’d forgotten about taxes. What was that saying, again? ‘Nothing is certain except death and taxes?’ Though I’d managed to get around death by being reborn, I still had to pay taxes.
“Next, before we go on this mission, does anyone need to buy anything?”
Kron frowned. “How long will we be gone for?”
Murr pulled out a map and a measuring tool. It took him mere moments before he said, “There is about a 2 hour travel time between us and the quest location, so, we’ll be over 4 hours, but I don’t see us taking longer than 10, depending on how long we stay there.”
“I have a tent in case we need to stay overnight, and rations for myself, however there is something I need to buy. A better set of armor.”
The two looked at me.
Murr grinned. “I know just the place. We can stop by there on our way to the mission.”
I eyed the catfolk, who looked like he managed to run away after eating cream. “This isn’t one of your parent’s places, is it?”
He smirked. “I talked to them yesterday. They decided that they weren’t going to pay for anything. In their words, I needed to learn about consequences and take some responsibility.” He did air quotes around the last word. “However, they did give us a token. With it, we can buy things below cost in their stores. So, let’s do our best to stick it to them.”
“Neither one of us expected you to pay for anything except your fair share,” I said.
Murr’s ears perked up.
“Technically, I did wonder if your parents might help us out, but I never expected them to,” Kron said. “And to answer your question, I’m good. I’ve been saving up mana potions and rations for years because I had a feeling I’d be a combat healer instead of a non-combat one. Frankly, I’m more worried about what we’re going to do about gear.”
“What about it?” I asked.
“Part of why it takes so long to reach high levels is that you need equipment that matches your rank or you won’t be able to fight. After level 160, it becomes impossible to find good gear at stores. You have to pay obscene amounts of money to have it custom made from the best craftsman.”
I froze. He was right. Gear was important. Almost as important as leveling and having the right skill set.
Back in my past life, video game developers would make monsters drop semi-random gear. Even if it wasn’t the best possible choice for a character type, it would still allow a player to keep grinding away at levels. Monsters here didn’t do that.
Now that I thought about games from my past life... they rewarded everyone for completing system quests. Those didn’t exist in this world... at least not for other people.
I had received a quest. Hell, I had even received swords. I didn’t think it was odd at the time since that was how things worked in the games from my past life, but this world was different. It was real, if insane.
The hidden quest I had received mentioned a Special Item. Did that mean, if I managed to suffer through six more Sack-Tap and Kills without crying, I’d get a weapon or armor for my trouble?
It might be worth it to try.
“We’ll have plenty of time to figure out the gear situation later,” I said. “For now, let’s complete this quest and work on creating some dodging skills.”
“Actually,” Murr said. “We might not have too much time since we’ll have to start leveling at twice the speed of those who aim for level 160.”
I shook my head. “We don’t need to level like that. We can level almost linearly, at 75 levels every year, and take our time getting to each one.”
Kron shook his head. “Actually, I think Murr has a point. I mean, the average adventurer aims for 80 in four years while we’d have to do that in one.”
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.
“Okay, this is getting confusing. Let’s keep it simple.” I scratched my head. “The normal way of doing things is earning 40 levels your first year, 22 your second, 12 your third and just 6 during your last. And you’re proposing that we change those numbers to be 160, 88, 48 and 24?” I scoffed. “That’s too extreme.”
Murr shrugged. “Maybe it is, but I think that will give us the most ideal time table.” Then his eyes dilated, and he stared off into the distance as if seeing an invisible demon. “We can figure it out later. I’m getting the zoomies! Let’s go!”
Then he stood up and bolted toward the door so fast it caused several Adventurers to jump out of his way.
***
Apparently, catfolk really did have to suddenly go running because Murr dragged us several blocks away, running the whole time. He only stopped when we reached his family’s armor smith. After picking up some heavily discounted K rank armor that had a similar style to my previous set, we once again traveled to the bunny dungeon.
There were several well-documented roads and pathways through the forest, so, while most of our trip to the beehive was long, it wasn’t too difficult. The hard part came after we left the pathways and I had to use everything I’d learned while growing up on the frontiers to navigate our way through the thick forests.
Finally, we reached a shadowy area with several massive bee hives the size of a house. Actually, I even saw a door. The nearest hive must have taken over an abandoned hunter’s shack.
Bees the size of my fist buzzed around everywhere like peaceful yellow honeybees. One even flew over my head, their legs covered in pollen dust.