“Well,” Kay addressed Murunel the dragon as he sat at one of the tables in the Adventurer’s Guild. “That was all of the enchanters in town that I’d be willing to work with, and none of them could help. The rest are either assholes or connected with Nelam, and that seems like a bad idea to let them know I found you.”

Murunel nodded in agreement.

He’d started with Dorine, since she was the enchanter he’d done the most business with, both in doing adventurer jobs for her and actual business, but she was only tier three and had pointed him in the direction of another enchanter in town who she’d studied with in the past. He was tier five, but he had no experience in breaking enchantments, and the others he’d recommended they ask weren’t able to help either.

After asking everyone, Kay had decided to head to the Adventurer’s Guild and look for a job to do. None of the enchanters had been able to do it, but all of them had told him that it’d be an expensive task, so he needed to start saving now. Hence the looking for a job part.

“Um, excuse me?”

Kay turned around to see a young-looking human woman with short brown hair. “Yes?”

“Um, well, I wanted to talk to you about yesterday, but… Who are you talking to?” She asked, looking a little nervous.

Kay held up the glass sphere on the chain around his neck. “This is Murunel. She got trapped in here by some asshole.” Eleniah had recommended that he avoid mentioning the Quest or anything related to it being a Nelamian noble who was the asshole, but apparently talking about a dragon trapped in a ball around his neck wouldn’t be a huge deal.

“Wow.” The woman leaned in close to look at Murunel, who narrowed her eyes back. “That’s not something you see every day.”

“No it isn’t.” Kay let the woman look for a moment more, then dropped the sphere back down. “Sorry, but you said you wanted to talk to me? Something about yesterday?”

“Yes! Sorry, my name is Alice, and I’m part of the same party as Korz, the man you healed yesterday.”

“I didn’t really heal him.” Kay objected, “I just kept him stable till the real healers fixed everything.”

Alice scoffed. “All the healers said that you were the one who kept him alive until they could close the wound, and that’s good enough for me. And for the rest of the party, too. Korz is still resting in bed, and he really wanted to thank you. Would you be willing to come to our place for a bit?”

“Uh…” Kay scratched the back of his head as he sat there awkwardly. He wasn’t entirely comfortable with the idea, but he didn’t want to be a jerk either. “Sure?”

“Great! It’s only a few minutes away.” She started walking off, and Kay trepidatiously followed.

The place really was only a few minutes away, a bit closer to the poorer sections of the city. It was a wooden house, nowhere near the level of the stone house Eleniah was renting, but nice enough, and large enough to hold a few people comfortably.

“Korz is in one of the back rooms, this way.” Alice led him deeper into the house, and through the door of one of the rooms. Inside, lying on a bed and loudly complaining about it, was a beastkin man who looked to be about Kay’s age. He had dark hair and pair of wolf ears.

“I’m fine! Let me sit up, dammit!” He snapped at the other man sitting next to him.

The half-elven man arguing with him didn’t notice Kay and Alice either. “Will you shut up! I don’t care if you can move, you shouldn’t be! Let yourself heal!”

“Korz!” Alice snapped angrily. “Lie back down! You’re not to stand up until tomorrow!”

Both men jumped in place completely surprised.

“Shit, Alice! Don’t-” The half-elven man stopped in place as he saw Kay. “Oh, you’re…”

Korz sat up in bed and looked straight at Kay. “Thank you for saving my life. I owe you.”

“I’m just happy that I managed to help.” Kay replied, ignoring the second part of Korz’s sentence. He didn’t know how to deal with someone thinking they owed him their life or whatever, so he wasn’t going to think about it. “You should probably lie back down though.”

Korz looked at Alice’s angry expression and slowly lowered himself back onto the bed. “Right.”

The half-elf stoop up and offered Kay his hand. “Nice to meet you. I’m Eduard. Thank you for saving Korz.”

“I’m Kay, and again, I’m just happy it worked. I’d never actually done that before.”

“Well, it did, and my friend is still alive because of it. So, again, thank you.”

Kay sat in the chair they offered, and ended up just chatting with them. They were really similar to Kay, at least in terms of adventuring experience. Alice and Eduard were both tier twos, with Korz only recently making it to tier three, along with their fourth member, another beastkin named Verndan, who wasn’t there at the moment. Together they made enough money to rent this house they were in to live together, and they were pooling their money to upgrade their gear and slowly work their way up.

At one point, they started talking about the job from yesterday. They’d gone hunting Growl Badgers, a badger monster that used weak sonic attacks.

“There was one that we hadn’t seen waiting to ambush us.” Korz told him. “It popped out of the ground right in front of me. I had just enough time to channel that stupid bracelet, and then its claws went in my gut.” He gestured at the side of his abdomen where he’d been wounded. “The others managed to kill it and drag me back to the city as fast as they could. You know the rest after that.”

“A bracelet?” Kay asked, not knowing what he was talking about.

“Right! That damn bracelet! Fucking thing didn’t do what it was supposed to!”

“Sorry, not sure what you mean.”

Alice stepped out of the room and came back with a small bronze bracelet with a small rounded gemstone set in it. “This is enchanted. We paid to get it identified and it said it’s supposed to generate a small magical shield to block an attack.”

“And it didn’t!” Korz complained. “It shot out a light that blinded the monster. Which is a good effect, but it didn’t do shit to stop the thing when it already had it’s momentum going right at me!”

“The blinding did make it easier to kill, so we managed to save time to get Korz back to safety.” Eduard added. “But it’s really weird that it didn’t make the shield like it’s supposed to. We paid good money to those Illuminator people to get it Identified too.”

“Illuminator people?”

“It’s an Identification Guild based in Nelam that recently moved here. Some of the people there are jerkish but they don’t discriminate against beastkin like a lot of Nelamian companies do, and their prices are decent. Plus they offer good rates for less than useful enchanted stuff.”

“Mind if I look at the bracelet?” Kay asked, a little bit curious.

“Sure.” Alice handed it over.

[————————————————————]

Small Magical Shield Conjuration Bracelet

- A bracelet made of bronze, enchanted to create a small magical shield when mana is pushed into it. The shield is three fourths of a meter wide and will defend against one attack. The shield will be destroyed by attacks more powerful than it, without stopping the attack.

[————————————————————]

“That name’s a bit of a mouthful.” Kay muttered as he read the description.

“Isn’t it?” Korz muttered. “Took me a while to remember it after the Illuminator guy told us it.”

“You have Identify?” Alice asked with a surprised tone.

“Only at level one.” Kay replied.

“Still, that’s pretty awesome. Did you get it from a class?”

Eduard poked her in the side.

“Oop!” She covered her mouth. “Sorry, I forget myself sometimes.”

Kay chuckled. “Nah, it’s fine. I didn’t get it from a class, I have a teacher. She taught it to me.”

“Wow! Your teacher has Identify at level twenty or higher? She must be something.”

“She is. She’s a tier five.”

“A tier five!” Korz stared at Kay with no small amount of jealousy. “Damn, thats amazing.”

“Yeah, she’s the best.” Kay replied with a big smile.

Kay stared at the bracelet, an idea slowly running through his head, picking up more and more speed as he thought it over. He glanced down at Murunel in her cage, then back at the bracelet. An identified item that didn’t do what it said it should… “Do you guys mind if I come right back?” He asked slowly.

“No, we don’t mind.” The three of them shared a look. “What’s up?” Alice asked.

“I have… I don’t know, call it a hunch.” He stood up and handed the bracelet back to Alice. “I’m going to go grab my teacher so she can look at this. I’ll be right back with her.”

It took Kay a little bit to track her down, she wasn’t at the house, or the Adventurer’s Guild. He found her on the way back from carrying some shopping home. “Kay? What’s up? I thought you were going to look for a job.”

“I ran into someone from the party of the guy I helped yesterday, and they told me something interesting. Can you come with me? I’ll tell you on the way.”

They went back to the house to drop off the stuff she’d bought, then she followed him to Alice’s party’s house.

“Guys, this is Eleniah, my teacher. She’s awesome.” He pointed at the bracelet. “And that is what I was talking about.”

Eleniah carefully took the bracelet from Alice, who was giving them both a confused look. Eleniah stared at it for a moment. “You were right Kay, this had a False Identify layer on it.”

The three members of the party jerked. “What?” Korz demanded as he sat up. He immediately laid back down in the face of Alice’s glare.

“Someone put False Identify on it? But the only person who touched it besides us was…” He scowled and cursed.

“The guy from Illuminator.” Eduard finished with a growl. “But why the hell would he do that?”

Kay gave Eleniah a significant look and lifted Murunel up.

She nodded. “Yeah, that’s a really big coincidence. But it could just be a coincidence.” She stared down at the bracelet. “It’s definitely something to look into though.”

“What are you guys talking about?” Korz asked.

Eleniah looked the three over, tapping the bracelet with a finger. “I can’t go into details, but Nelam’s been making some interesting moves to the west recently, and some of those moves are making The Adventurer’s Guild a bit nervous. They asked me to look into some things here in Tumbling Rapids.” She held up the bracelet and twisted it in the light. “This thing, and the Illuminator group may or may not be related. But it smells fishy.” She looked up at the three of them. “Don’t spread this around please, I don’t want them knowing I’m looking into them if possible.”

They shared a look, then nodded slowly. “Will you tell us what you find out?”

“If it was just some asshole being an asshole, or something weird that had nothing to do with anybody, sure. If it’s something more, I’ll be telling guildmaster Caruion, and he’ll decide who gets to know what after that.”

They shared another look, then Alice answered for the party. “We can deal with that. If it’s something big and guildmaster Caruion takes care of it, we’ll be fine. He looks out for his adventurers.”

Eleniah smiled. “That he does.” She pocketed the bracelet. “Alright, I’m going to go now. It looks like I’m going to be a bit busier from now on.”