Little is known about the world before the coming of the Seven, and nothing is known for sure. There are no known written records or oral traditions that go back to before there were nine Gods. One theory holds that the different races were created in the same event that created the Seven.

The two Gods that remain from that time choose not to speak of it, and so the mortal races are left wondering. What was the reason for Ix’s death? The only two witnesses are also, as far as we know, the only possible perpetrators.

- Heresies of Kaval

The next day, the first priority was registration with the Adventurer’s Guild. Kyle and Felicia were members in good standing, but Cloridan needed to renew his lapsed membership, and I had to register for the *cough* first time.

Actually, before that, I really should see what my ‘reward’ from Aubert was. The package had arrived at the last minute, almost as if the man had been having my preparations to leave watched. Past caring, I’d thrown it in with the rest of my luggage. Now, with most of my unpacking done, I stared at it on the breakfast table like it was a snake.

“What do you think it is?” Felicia asked.

“No idea,” I said, frowning. “He said he owed me for saving his life, so you’d think it would be something worthwhile, but he does hate me a lot.”

“Probably something decent,” Cloridan opined. “If he doesn’t clear the debt, he’ll feel like he still owes you, and won’t be able to dismiss you like he wants.”

“Seems to me that a reward should be presented, and not just sent in the post,” I grumbled.

“Well, he does hate you a lot,” Kyle said.

“Whatever,” I said, and started opening my present. It was sealed in a box, so the process involved a lot of prying and cutting away wax. When it was done, the contents were revealed.

[Identification]: - Codex of Flood and Flow - Quality: Good - Properties: Teach (Water Magic)

“Fuuuuuucck,” I said.

“That’s actually a valuable reward,” Cloridan said. “I know you’ve been looking for magical texts, so you know how hard they are to find.”

“Aubert knows that as well,” I said. “So I guess it is valuable, but it’s a water magic text.”

“It’s support magic, yes. You still want it though, don’t you?”

“I suppose,” I sulked. “What are the chances that this was the only magical text he had sitting around?”

“Almost none,” Kyle said. “A noble house like his would have had a hundred years to gather up all the texts they could.”

A library gathered over a hundred years? That gave me an idea, but I put it to one side for now.

“So he picked the one that was least useful,” I said. “Ice, Fire or Earth would have combat applications - Air would have let me fly… small mercy he didn’t find a Mental text.”

“If he had given you one of those, you could have reported him for possession of one,” Cloridan pointed out. “I doubt he would have opened himself up like that.”

“Feels like wasting a skill point on this,” I complained. “But… I’m not likely to find books out here. I guess I’ll start studying this afternoon.”

“Right,” Cloridan said. “The Guild. Shall we get going?”

“How about we go in separately,” I replied. “I don’t want any rumours starting about the two of us.”

“I suppose I should take that as a request not to start any then,” he joked, laughing as I glared at him. He made a mock bow as he took his leave.

“Did you want to talk about the Chosen coming?” Felicia asked. Cutter had gobbled breakfast and left already, so it was just those of us in the know remaining.

“Not much to talk about,” I said. “I think I’ll definitely try to contact them, compare notes. Paladin of Life, eh? I wonder if that means they’ve heard from… Duit, wasn’t it?”

Felicia nodded. “Have you thought about contacting the churches to see if they know what God chose you?”

“I’ve avoided churches entirely,” I said, scowling. “Eight out of the nine will want nothing to do with me, and the remaining one is responsible for kidnapping… or whatever-ing me.”

“Was that book of the Chosen any help?” she asked.

“Not really, there were some warnings about not trusting the Gods, about not introducing technology, that sort of thing. A lot of it was opinions on the politics of the time, which I guess is a hundred years out of date.”

“What’s technology, and why shouldn’t you introduce it?”

“Technology is… better, more advanced versions of the tools you’re using,” I said. “All the weapons you guys use are only historical artefacts where I come from.”

I sighed, “And as for why not to introduce them… well. The thing about this world is that if I teach someone to make a g- a better crossbow, then that knowledge gets entered into the system. As an improvement to an existing [Craft] skill, or a new skill entirely. At which point anyone in the world can make them.”

“That’s normal… Oh! It isn’t in your world?”

“No,” I said. “Normally the point of teaching your friends new technology is to give them an advantage. The way knowledge is distributed instantly… well it has some advantages.”

“I see,” Felicity said, still catching up. “In your world, if your country had better technology, you’d have an advantage against other countries.”

“Yeah. That said, I don’t think it’s a reason not to introduce any technology. Just stuff that makes things better, unlike weapons.”

“So are you going to do that then?” Felicia asked excitedly. “That sounds like it could be fun!”

“Well maybe,” I said. “There are two problems with the idea. First of all, I wasn’t a… a [Crafter] in my world. So my knowledge of technology is somewhat lacking.

“The other problem is that it’s hard to know which advances are safe, and which will lead to better weapons.”

“Oh,” she said, deflating somewhat. “So it’s back to the [Enchanting]?”

“And killing monsters,” I said. “Why don’t we head to the Guild?”

The guild was, well, much like the first time I joined.

Just like a franchise, I thought. The procedure was the same. This time, on Cloridan’s advice, I declined to name my Profession, just saying ‘support mage’.

Yes, it was a little irritating to know that I could have just done that the first time. Although I was hiding my level that time, so I guess it wouldn’t have helped.

Joining up with Cloridan, we registered as a team. Felicia, giggling, had suggested the Black Swan Company for the name, and no one objected. Kyle and Felicia had managed to get Silver rank, so as a team we could apply for better jobs. Checking out the board, I saw that the majority of Bronze jobs were for hunting beasts in the forest, for skins or meat.

I asked Kyle about traps, and he told me that they did get used, but you had to keep a watch over them. A trapped beast made a lot of noise, which attracted other beasts. They would attack the trapped creature, ruining the skin, wrecking the trap, and eating the meat.

“If you’re up for it, you can get a lot of kills that way,” he said. “But you’ll be fighting just about every monster that comes looking, and they’ll all be trying to sneak up on you.”

The Cult of Toriao apparently had a presence in the town - they were offering a few quests to either capture or record details about certain specific monsters found in the deep woods. Kyle didn’t think much of these quests either.

“Capture a monster?” he exclaimed. “That’d be a real pain to do. Felicia has [Hunt] so we should be able to track down the monsters they’re looking for, but…” he trailed off, shaking his head.

“It might be easier with [Blind]?” I suggested.

“Um, yeah, it might be,” he said, reconsidering. “Cloridan, do you know these monsters?”

“Nope,” Cloridan said. “I don’t think they were around when I was up here. If people knew about them, the Temple of Knowledge wouldn’t be funding quests to gather information about them.”

Both of them made concerned noises at each other. Apparently going looking for an unknown monster was asking for trouble.

The jobs Kyle did like, were for rare drops from monsters contained in the two dungeons. Here again, we were lacking information. We noted the details so we could look into how hard the items were to get, which dungeons they dropped in, and whether we could sell the items for more.

“Old trick that newbies still fall for,” Cloridan said. “Put up a quest for something, then turn around and sell it for a profit. I mean that’s what most of these jobs are, but generally, they’ll be selling it after processing, or in a different town or something. But sometimes you can get away with just going next door and selling it for a profit.”

We split up. Felicia and I headed to the Guild library to research monsters, while Cloridan and Kyle went to the market to get prices.

“Who’d have thought adventuring would involve going through so many books?” I joked to Felicia.

She smiled, “We met in the Oakway Guild library, didn’t we? It only makes sense to start an expedition by informing yourself.”

“I guess so,” I said, and put my head down. After we finished this, I had some more studying to do at home.

“Are we ready then?” I asked the group. We had maps, we had supplies, we had a list of monsters. We had a plan.

Everyone nodded, so I cast [Greater Invisibility] on Cloridan and let him head out. Once he was out of sight, we followed along.

We weren’t expecting any problems on the trip, but we all agreed it was better to be prepared. The trail was pretty well marked, so even those of us without [Hunt] should be able to follow it. Others should have gone before us on the trail, so the chance of encountering monsters was also quite low.

Nonetheless, we had Cloridan out scouting ahead of us. The journey to the dungeon was quite far, and we needed to hustle to get there and back within the day. None of us wanted to camp out in the forest at night. Invisible, Cloridan didn’t have to worry about stealth, and could move quickly while still keeping an eye out.

You couldn’t run properly in the forest, the ground was too uneven. Still, we moved as quickly as we could. It was about an hour later when I spotted Cloridan’s outline and called it out to the others. He had stopped and was waiting for us.

“What’s up?” I asked. He put his hand to his ear in response. Listening, we could hear shouts and snarls from up ahead.

“Combat?” I asked, and he nodded. “I guess we proceed cautiously and see if they need help?” He nodded again. I looked at the others, and they were up to speed. As a group, we moved cautiously forward.

The noise quickly increased as we approached, and we quickly came to within sight of the conflict.

Four adventurers were holding off a group of what had to be Hawk-wolves.

[Identification]: - Harrier-Wolf (male) - Threat: 10 - Status: Injured

Right, because the System needed to distinguish between different types of Hawk-wolves. They were easy for me to identify, as they were wolves with hawk-heads, naturally. Much like a griffin, and like the griffins they were supposed to have escaped from one of the dungeons here - which had a Chimera theme.

I wasn’t looking forward to the rat-snakes.

Facing them was a rag-tag group of individuals… no really - they weren’t even of the same race. There was one human, a fox-kin, a short and stocky individual that might well be a Dwarf, and an even smaller girl. Unless she was a short nine-year-old, she must be a halfling.

This was pretty rare, in my oh-so-extensive experience. Latorra was a human nation, which didn’t mean that the other races were excluded, but they were much less common. Non-humans were overrepresented in the Adventuring profession - the Delvers back in Oakway were an example of that - but I’d learned since that they were an exception to the normal rule.

Regardless, this group didn’t appear to be having much trouble with the hawk-wolves. Only 5 remained, out of a pack of about 8, judging from the corpses on the ground. The adventurers were bleeding, but none of them were down.

Aside from our invisible scout, we weren’t the stealthiest of woodland creatures. When we came into sight, it was with enough noise for both sides to notice us. Evidently taking us for reinforcements, the hawk-wolves started screeching and all broke off from the fight at the same time.

A few seconds later it was just us adventurers in the clearing looking at each other nervously. The other party all eyed us warily, and showed no sign of putting up their weapons.

“Um, Hi there!” I said. “We come in peace?”