As you can probably imagine, the party’s adventures around DeepMine are some of my most cherished.

However, that also means that they are the most painful to look back on.

…

Forgive me. I set out to tell my story, and I will try to not soil the happy memories with my later regrets.

These were, after all, the happiest times of my life.

---

I’m not sure how long Megan and I would have stayed there watching the stars if we weren’t interrupted. However, it came to an end when we heard another set of howls.

Now that I was no longer staggering around and seeing double, I quickly took care of them. It was an easy fight, and we took no physical damage, but the damage to the mood was pretty severe.

Megan looted the bodies then said, “Guess I should get back.”

I nodded. “Yeah, it’s getting pretty late, isn’t it?” I looked her in the eyes. “Thanks for watching over me while I was drunk.”

Megan paused. “I would say you’re welcome, but… you’re not. Next time you get that drunk, I’m leaving you to the wolves.”

I chuckled. “What, didn’t like watching me make a fool of myself?”

“I wouldn’t have minded that. It was kinda funny watching you trip over yourself.” She gave me a dirty look, “But having to drag your drunk asp out of town to avoid a monster attack and you stumbling around in combat wasn’t exactly funny.”

I winced. “Yeah, that’s fair.”

She shook her head. “Also, 7 barrels of the stuff? Are you spitting me?”

“Err… It was actually 8 or 9, I think.” I held up my hands in surrender. “I wasn’t the only one drinking, though.”

She snorted. “Perfect. You were drunk enough you couldn’t even count right.”

I crossed my arms. “Hey! I was getting there! I just got distracted-“ I decided not to finish the rest of that thought out loud. Because I couldn’t figure out why I had 7 fingers on my left hand.

“Then there was telling everyone that I was a thief and that you’re a [Demon Lord].”

“Hey, to be fair, our story sounds 100% like something a drunk would make up, so I’m sure no one bought it.”

She ignored me and continued. “And then you scared the sit out of that poor woman.”

I grimaced. “Yeah, no excuse there.”

She gave me a slightly curious look. “How did you even do that anyway?”

“I don’t know.” I frowned and thought back over it. How did I do that? It was similar, but it didn’t feel quite like wrath aura. I tried to focus on what it felt like.

I was a bit too successful.

Megan jumped back from me. “Holy ship, Titus.” I immediately let whatever the heck I was doing go, and she shivered once before scowling at me.

I just chuckled. “Yeah, a holey ship would definitely not be good.”

She crossed her arms. “It’s not funny, and never use that on me again.”

I held up my hands in surrender. “Okay, I won’t.”

“Promise.”

“I promise I won’t use that aura on you ever again.”

She looked me in the eyes and then nodded slowly. “Good.”

We stood there awkwardly for a few seconds before she turned away. “I should get going.” She paused for a second and then looked back. “Good night, Titus.”

“You too,” I said and gave her a slight wave.

With that, I was left alone, and I went back to practicing some of my [Martial Arts]. I’m glad Lindsey wasn’t there because my mind wasn’t fully focused on it. It also wasn’t focused on Megan either, surprisingly.

How much of the night do I have left to idle away? I thought as I went through a few kicks. Megan and I left before a monster wave could start, so that was before midnight. But then she waited with me until I was done being drunk. I paused my kicking because I was too distracted. How long did I stay drunk? I drank a lot. In fact, I’m starting to wonder if I was running that tavern out of their stock…

I winced. “Maybe I should see about paying them for some of that.” I shook my head. “Speaking of, I wonder how much of the party’s gold is considered mine? I’ve killed hundreds of wolves by this point, but is my share by the number of enemies killed, or is the party just splitting funds nine ways, or is it just a group pot?” I frowned. I should probably get that figured out sooner rather than later. I mean, I don’t need money right now, but I should when I can finally equip weapons or armor.

I realized that I was off my initial topic. Where was I? Right. How long did I spend drunk? Well, I drank an absolutely absurd amount of alcohol. I think even a tenth of that amount would basically kill anyone on Earth. I paused for a second. I wonder if that means that [Status Effect Resistance] literally saved my life last night. Can people die from the drunk status effect?

I shook my head and tried to focus. Either way, we were attacked by monsters right as we came out here. Then Megan stood guard, but we didn’t get attacked again until after the drunk status wore off.

However, since monsters didn’t strictly come on set intervals, that didn’t help. However, it did leave me with the opinion that I likely spent less than 2 hours drunk after Megan got me. Maybe even as little as 30 minutes.

“I wonder if I could test again sometime and get an accurate reading,” I shook my head. “That’s probably a terrible idea.” I looked around, trying to find inspiration, but didn’t see much. “Guess I’ll just go back to fighting imaginary stuff until more monsters show.”

I went back to practicing as I idly remembered how awful I fought when I was drunk. I chuckled when I remembered the part where I was unable to summon a dave and then stopped. “I guess it makes sense that you can’t perform a spell without the correct words, but I’m surprised drunk slurring was enough of a difference.”

That was enough cause for a short break because there was science to be done. I tried mangling the summon in various ways, but sure enough, none of them worked. I had to say exactly the words “Summon Dave” in that order with nothing in between. All in all, it was a bit depressing since I was hoping I could discover something more about magic.

It would have been a complete waste of time if I didn’t also try something else.

“[Summon Dave],” I said as fast as possible. The dave appeared, but unlike the slime ball’s typical summoning, it wasn’t immediately after I finished saying the words.

I repeated the experiment twice more because I had the mana to do that, and I got the same results.

I looked down at my trio of daves. “So, you guys have a cast time, I guess? But it’s a pretty short one. Like only a single second?”

The daves just sat there.

I stretched a bit. “Well, that was fun, but I guess back to [Martial Arts] practice.” I barely finished saying that before more wolf howls interrupted me. “Or not.”

I waited for them to lope towards me and had another thought. I guess those will work better than kicking the air, right? Kicks only?

All told, the fight wasn’t terribly interesting except for the fact that I ended up taking a single hit. That accidentally woke up some of the party, and I had to send them a “stand down” message.

The fact that I had to do that made me pause, though. Why wasn’t this a problem when Lindsey and I were sparring? I realized the unfortunate truth pretty quickly. I never did damage to her. Did I?

That put a slight damper on my mood, but it also made me even more determined. I settled in for a night of practicing [Martial Arts] with the occasional monster attack. I also decided to go ahead and stack the bodies because I had an idea of how I could use the gold.

It wasn’t the fastest night to pass, but it felt faster than usual. I chalked it up to the later start or the good mood that I was in.

Either way, when the sun rose, I started spamming Jake with a “gather” message through the party. That immediately caused confusion since he assumed I was under attack and needed help. That assumption caused him to mobilize the rest of the party.

Oops.

I didn’t need the entire party out there to collect the loot, and I felt bad about most likely causing a panic, so I sent “stand down” to everyone. However, Jake was included in that, so I immediately followed that up with a “gather” sent to him only.

There was a lull from the party, and I could practically see Jake doing his breathing exercises.

That’s one cycle… Two cycles… Three cycles…

I finally got a “gather” message from Jake. Dang, three breathing cycles. I really ticked him off. However, I didn’t want to waste time going back and forth, so I sent him another “gather” message.

That revealed one of the weaknesses of the perk. We were sending each other messages, but you couldn’t really call it communicating.

Jake held on for another 2 minutes of us sending messages back and forth before he finally gave up, and I could tell he was on the way.

Shockingly, Jake didn’t seem to be in the best of moods when he finally met up with me.

“So, what’d you drag me all the way out here for?” he asked. “At the crack of dawn?”

I gestured to the stack of monster corpses. “I was hoping you could loot these. I wanted the gold for something.”

Jake sighed and started looting. “How’d you end up out of town anyway? I thought you were busy celebrating and getting drunk.”

I chuckled sheepishly. “I uhhhh…” I can’t exactly tell him the real reason I went out of town. I decided to give him mostly the truth. “After drinking a metric ton, I found out the hard way that I could actually get drunk... Very drunk. I ended up wandering out of town afterward.”

Jake shook his head. “I should’ve known better than to leave you without adult supervision.”

I was about to reply when I saw the cheeky grin on his face. I chuckled. “Yup, but I don’t know that anyone in our party really qualifies except Andrew and Garrett then.”

“What? I’m totally an adult!”

“Suuure, [Hero]. Sure.”

There was a bit more good-natured ribbing, and I was glad to see that Jake’s mood recovered quickly despite my early morning wake-up call. Eventually, he finished and dusted his hands off. “Looks like it was… 34 gold.”

“That’ll have to do. Thanks.” I held out my hand to him, and he materialized 7 coins that he handed over. I looked at the gold. “I thought you said it was 34?”

“I did?” Jake looked confused for a second. “Huh. I wanted to pull out 34, so what happened?”

I was a bit slow on the uptake but finally figured it out. “Oh!” I pointed at 3 of the coins. “These must be worth 10.” I gave him a quizzical look. “How have coin denominations not come up for you yet. I mean, haven’t you had to buy stuff?”

“Well yeah, but normally for bartering, it’s inventory to inventory. I don’t think I’ve ever had a reason to pull out physical gold before.” Jake looked thoughtful. “In fact, I wonder if you can even spend gold without an inventory.”

We turned to head back to town when I remembered that I shouldn’t just leave daves lying around. A minute and 3 [Disrupts] later, and we were on our way. I was once again grateful Sam wasn’t there to witness it.

As we got into town proper, Jake asked. “What are you going to get anyway?”

I grimaced. “You know how I mentioned that I drank a lot? Well, I feel bad since they gave me so much beer for free, and I wanted to at least pay for a bit of it.”

“Oh. That’s nice of you, but it’s not like you could have drunk that much.”

I paused for a moment. “8 barrels.”

“What?” Jake gave me a quizzical look. “I must’ve not heard you right. What’d you say?”

“8 barrels,” I repeated. “I didn’t drink all of it since there were a bunch of other people drinking, and I may have double-counted a barrel or two due to double vision, but that’s how much alcohol we went through.”

He sighed. “You know what, I’m not even mad. I’m impressed. How on Earth did you manage to drink that much?”

“How on Placeholder,” I corrected him. “And… Because it’s Placeholder. I think that drinks just apply a drunk debuff to you, and I must have kept resisting it. [Status Effect Resistance], you know?”

“Wow,” he said and then paused for a bit. “Please tell me you aren’t going to empty out taverns everywhere we go.”

“Of course not,” I shook my head. “That was more of a one-off science experiment to see if I could even get drunk. I don’t think I’ll drink again.”

Jake chuckled. “Yeah, I bet you woke up to a massive hangover.” Then he realized what he said. “Wait. You couldn’t even sleep it off, could you? Did you just have to wait it out?”

“Yeah,” I replied. “I stumbled off out of town and had to just wait the debuff out. And I guess I don’t get hungover either?”

“That’s lucky, I guess.” There was silence for a bit before he continued. “How was fighting while drunk?”

“Miserable,” I answered. “I was seeing double, and I couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn.”

“How come you only got hit the one time then?”

“Oh, Megan actually found me and stayed with me until I was sober again.” Wait. Speaking of Megan. “I noticed she’s still not back in the party. Didn’t she show up last night?”

Jake shook his head. “Nope. Haven’t seen her since you two went off on your own adventure.”

“Huh.” I didn’t think she would vanish on me after what happened, but I have to admit that a part of me was worried.

Jake ended up staying with me as I tracked down the owner of the tavern. I apologized and gave her the gold I had earned that night. It was a good thing Jake was there because the poor woman was honestly still afraid of me, and I had to apologize for scaring her too.

After that, we made our way back towards the inn, where the rest of the party was waiting.

“So, what did you do to scare that poor [Tavernkeeper]?” Jake asked.

I could tell him. A wicked grin came to my face. Orrr. “This,” I said as I pushed out the same aura that I had the last night.

He jumped. “What the heck? How did you?...”

“What’s the matter [Hero]? Jumping at nothing?” I grinned.

He scowled, and we walked in silence for a bit. “Do it again,” he finally said.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about [Hero],” I said and then whistled innocently.

Jake stopped where he stood and waited until I did too. “I’m serious. Whatever you did, do it again really quick.”

I shrugged. “Alright. Sure.” I focused my aura again. I could almost feel it spreading out in a circle around me. It approached Jake…

And suddenly stopped.

I was baffled as my aura suddenly stopped dead against… Something. Meanwhile, Jake had a large grin on his face as that… something… pushed back against me.

I was too stunned to put up much of a fight, and Jake’s aura beat mine back. Soon it washed over me.

I’m sure you’re curious by now. If a [Demon Lord’s] aura could make someone angry or afraid, what would a [Hero’s] aura do? To answer your question, I was suddenly filled with feelings of friendship, courage, and hope.

I doubled over and almost vomited on the spot.

Jake immediately let go of his newfound aura and ran over to me. “Titus! You okay?”

I straightened. “Yeah. The uh, demon part of me must not have liked that.”

Jake looked sheepish. “Sorry, man, I didn’t think it would do such a number on you.”

I waved him off. “Don’t worry about it. Just a standard risk when we’re messing with stuff we don’t know about.”

Jake paused. “Speaking of messing around with stuff… Could you try that again with your wrath aura?”

“What? Why?”

“I kinda want to see if I can counter that too.”

“I guess I could give it a go. I just don’t see why you’re so gungho to test it.”

Jake sighed. “Look, you’re only half a demon, and you have all this crazy stuff going on. Creating monsters, not needing sleep or food, and now this aura power. Wouldn’t it make sense for the [Demon Lord] to have all of that and more? What if he has his own aura that we have to worry about?” Jake gave me a serious look. “Who knows, but maybe part of the reason you were included in the prophecy was so that I could practice before facing off against the big bad.”

Given that line of reasoning, I could hardly say no without just telling him the whole truth then and there. I acquiesced, let the wrath version of my aura out, and quickly felt it basically swatted out of the air.

I tried to up the power of my aura by allowing myself to get a bit angrier, but it didn’t make much of a difference. I could have pushed it even more, but I was worried about accidentally activating wrath form. Eventually, I gave up and told Jake we should get back to the party.

Stupid BS [Hero] class. I grumbled to myself.

When we made it back to the rest of the party, Emilia was having an animated discussion with a man who reminded me of a weasel. The rest of the party and the man I recognized as the village [Foreman] were standing by, various degrees of disapproval written on their faces.

“Hey, Em!” Jake called out. “What’s going on?”

Emilia turned to Jake with a scowl on her face that lightened softly when she saw him. “This fine gentleman,” she said with a voice telling us exactly what she thought of him. “Was just informing us that passage on their trip will require us to purchase a ticket per person.”

“Well, that doesn’t sound too bad. What’s the deal?”

“It’s 50 gold per ticket.”

“50 gold? Really?” Jake turned the question to the now-smirking man. “You do realize that we’re the only reason that this shipment’s going out, right?”

“I am quite aware,” the man answered. “However, [Lord] Redfield was quite clear with my instructions. If you want to travel with the caravan, you will need a ticket. If you want a ticket, you will need to purchase it from me. And as the Great System has determined, the price for you adventurers is 50 gold.”

While Jake, Emilia, and the weasel argued for a bit, I quietly asked Garrett. “What did he mean by as the Great System has determined?”

Garrett shrugged. “I’m not entirely sure either. However, when we were buying things, there was always a fixed price for any given item at any given [Merchant], and haggling seems unheard of. Maybe they weren’t the ones determining the value? Maybe it’s actually calculated based on the item’s cost and skills or something?”

“Hmm, that’s weird,” I replied. I had another question, but it wasn’t one that the [Berserker] would be able to answer. I went over to the [Foreman]. “I assumed we were going to be able to ride for free. What happened?”

The [Foreman] grimaced. “I’m sorry, lad, especially after everything you did for us. I thought we’d be able to get you on for free since there’s never been a charge before. However, [Lord] Redfield must have heard what happened and that some adventurers wanted to head north. That greedy scoundrel owns the horses and carts used for our shipments, so if he wants to charge for it, the [Guards] will, unfortunately, be on his side.”

I reassured the [Foreman] that I wasn’t upset, and it was about that time that the other argument ended.

“In that case, we may as well walk!” Emilia said. “I’m done here. Let’s go.”

Jake shrugged and waved to the party. “Sorry, guys. Looks like we’re walking.” He then started after Emilia.

After a few seconds, the stunned party filed in after him. I jogged to catch up and then whispered. “I thought the entire point of waiting around was to catch a ride north? Why are we leaving?”

“Just wait a second. Em has a plan, I’m sure of it,” Jake replied with total confidence.

“Okay,” I replied with less than half confidence.

We got maybe 30 steps away when the man called out. “Wait! You aren’t seriously planning on walking the entire way, are you?”

The party looked to Jake, but Jake looked to Emilia. Seeing that the ball was in her court, she spoke in a tone that made me think of a noble talking down to an uneducated peasant. “Well, it is not as though you leave us much of an alternative. Sure, it will not be comfortable walking all the way to the capital, but we’ve traveled under much worse conditions.” Emila adopted a thoughtful look. “It is, of course, regrettable that [Lord] Redfield didn’t see fit to help the [Hero] with his quest, but I am sure the [King] will understand his reasons when we bring that up during our petition for aid from the crown.”

Emilia’s thoughtful look vanished, and she turned up her death glare to 11 as the man turned white as a sheet.

“I-I-I think you may have misread the cost listings, young miss,” the man stammered out. “Perhaps if you took another look?”

Emilia kept her death glare up and stalked over to the man. She paused for a second when she reached him, and I had to assume that she must have been in a trade window.

“40 gold,” she said. “Really? That’s the best you can do?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” he replied. “It was always 40 gold! That is the price for you adventurers. I won’t apologize for the price that the Great System has determined!”

Emilia’s look turned thoughtful. “The price for us adventurers. Hmm.”

However, the [Foreman] rounded on the weasel. “Oh, it was always 40 gold, eh? You don’t just happen to be a [Crooked Merchant] with some type of skill like [Illegal Markup]? You know as well as I do an honest [Merchant] can’t change prices at the drop of a hat!”

“O-O-Of course not! I would swear it under truth stone!” the [Crooked Merchant] replied.

The [Foreman] was about to push the point when Emilia interrupted. “Excuse me. Would you mind trading with him and telling me what price you see for the tickets?”

That stopped him short. “I suppose I could. I don’t have the [Merchant] class, though, so it will be the same as it is for you.” His jaw dropped after he looked at the cost. “20 gold? What is the meaning of this? Are you that much of a cheat?”

The [Foreman] grabbed the weasel by the shirt collar, and he started blubbering. “No! No! Wait! The System itself marks up prices for adventurers! I swear! I am not cheating them!” He turned even whiter after that.

That led to an interrogati- I mean, a very civil discussion where we found out exactly what he was talking about. The [Foreman] also filled us in on some details which were just the common sense of Placeholder, but to give the short version of it, the higher a non-adventurer’s [Merchant] class, the better price the System gave them for buying and selling.

Apparently, adventurers seemed to be treated as essentially having a negative amount for that. The [Foreman] had no [Merchant] class, but the man in front of us claimed to be a level 3 [Merchant]. Instead of the ticket’s absolute base price, which was apparently 8 gold, the [Foreman] would be charged 20 gold. However, whenever he made a trade with anyone in the party, the price was double that.

“That certainly explains why arrows were so expensive to purchase,” Emilia muttered. Then a wide grin broke across her face. She turned to the [Foreman] and said, “Would you be willing to purchase the tickets for us?”

He grimaced. “I’m sorry, but there’s no way I could afford that. I don’t mean to be ungrateful, but that amount would be worth months of work.”

Emilia shook her head. “No, I mean that we give you the gold, and then you purchase the tickets for us.”

The [Foreman] shifted uneasily. “My ma always said not to do any trading outside of the System’s trade window. It’s a good way to get scammed.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll give you the gold first. In fact, since you’d be saving us 180 gold, we could even give you a cut?” Emilia asked with the question turned to Jake.

Jake shrugged. “Yeah, as long as it isn’t too big, that should be fine.”

“Then how about we give you 200 gold for 9 tickets? You can keep the extra 20 for yourself.”

The [Foreman] ended up accepting, though he kept muttering about how he didn’t like it and that he felt like a [Scammer].

In the end, the party got the tickets, the [Foreman] got a nice windfall, and the [Crooked Merchant] got anxiety as he had to try to figure out a way to explain to his [Lord] why he brought in 270 gold less than expected. Everyone wins.

With that, the party was finally ready to leave town, and we made our way to the caravan. However, I was getting worried because we were missing something.

“Has anyone seen Megan?” I asked.

She appeared right next to me and scared the living daylights out of me. “Yup, I’ve seen her,” she snarked.

While I regained my composure, Jake handed her a ticket and also gave her a party invite. The entire gang was back together, and we were ready to hit the road in style.

… Or so we thought.

We were taken to a somewhat rickety covered wagon that looked like it could barely fit us.

“This is what we paid for?” Emilia asked incredulously.

“Well, this town isn’t exactly rich, so I guess I should have expected it,” Jake said. “But, it at least beats walking, right?”

The rest of the party didn’t answer that.

However, we were currently the ones holding up the caravan, so we all piled in with minimal complaints. By that, I mean that Emilia and I were the only ones that actually complained out loud. I’m sure the rest of the party was thinking the same things we were, though.

As for the seating, the space was as cramped as we thought. Garrett and I had to duck down when we first got in so that we didn’t hit our heads on the top of the wagon. However, I was squished up next to Megan, so at least there was one upside to being turned into adventurer sardines.

Once we were all situated, Jake told the driver we were ready, and we took off at blinding speed… I’m kidding. We watched with a bit of disappointment as the horses started pulling us along at a pace that was just about the same as our average walking speed.

“This is a letdown,” Jake finally said. “It will take ages to get to Vir at this rate.”

“What?” I asked. “Aren’t we already in Vir?”

“No, I meant the capital,” Jake replied. A look of recognition came over his face. “Riiight. You and Megan weren’t around when we discussed our next steps.” Jake was no longer looking at me, and I realized he must have been in one of his menus. “I managed to find a map, but instead of needing to buy it, it updated my system map.” He pointed at mid-air. “We’re all the way down here, but this caravan is headed to the capital city of the Vir Kingdom, Vir.” His finger moved upward and then off to the side.

“Wait, the kingdom is Vir, and the capital’s also Vir?” I asked.

“It is also the [King’s] surname,” Tim added. “It is probable that the [King] is merely the eponymous ruler of both.” He paused. “By that, I meant that the [King’s] name was given to the capital and then to the kingdom.”

“Of course,” I nodded. “I know what eponymous means.”

Jake snorted. “Speak for yourself.” We laughed a bit at that, then Jake continued his explanation. “Anyway, going to Vir isn’t the straightest shot north, but we figured that we’d have better luck finding transport there. Emilia also had the idea to ask the [King] for help. Worst case, he says no. Best case, we can probably speed up our trip a lot.”

“Probably no more caravans,” I joked.

Jake laughed. “Yeah, no more caravans. I think the best-case scenario is if we can get our own horses. Unless they have teleportation magic here, which would be awesome.”

“I kinda doubt it at this point. Unless, of course, all the teleportation mages are kept in the capital or something.” I paused for a bit but had another question. “Hey, [Hero]. How far do you think it will be to the 2nd elemental dungeon?”

“Hmm,” Jake replied. It looked like he was scrolling upward on his map. “If I had to guess, quite a ways. I mean, it took us several days to get from Faroff to DeepMine, and I think it will take us at least a few weeks just to get out of Vir.”

“What kingdom are we visiting after Vir?” Sam asked. “Is it an elven kingdom? A dwarven one? Oh! What about a beastborn one?”

Jake chuckled. “Well, we’re going north, so it definitely won’t be the beastborn kingdom.” He frowned. “I wonder if I can share the map. That would make this a lot easier to explain.” He tried some different gestures and then basically flicked the map in my direction.

I was startled when it worked, and I suddenly saw the map that Jake was looking at.

“Nice!” Jake exclaimed, and he repeated the same gesture until everyone in the party was pouring over the same map. We quickly found out that Jake was the only one who could control it, so he basically took on the role of lecturer.

He panned the map back to the south. “Here we are right now,” he said as he zoomed us in on DeepMine. “We’re traveling northwest up to the center of the kingdom of Vir to the capital city.” He panned us along until we reached a city labeled Vir. “After that, I don’t know exactly what route we need to take, but we’re headed up to the Pumil-Vir river.”

He panned us up to a wide river jutting off to the west.

“The Pumil-Vir river? Is that the one separating Vir from the dwarf kingdom?” Garrett asked.

“Ding-ding-ding, we have a winner,” Jake replied. “The kingdoms are split off by these giant rivers coming out of the Great Central Mountains.” Jake zoomed out and then took the map to the center, where a large stretch of mountains was displayed. There was a lot less detail there. I assumed that was because the map he got to look at didn’t have as much detail outside of Vir.

He zoomed out a bit more until we could see all four rivers jutting out in each of the cardinal directions and then continued. “Based on what I’ve learned, the four great rivers coming out of the Great Central Mountains form the borders for the 4 kingdoms.” He shook his head. “And people in this world could really use another adjective besides ‘great’ for naming their stuff.”

“Anyway,” he said as he panned us around the map. “We’re currently down here in the southwest kingdom of Vir. Populated by humans. Duh.” He scrolled up. “The northwest kingdom is Pumil populated by the dwarves.” As soon as Jake passed the Pumil-Vir river, the map was essentially blank.

He took us east. “In the northeast past the Dryadal-Pumil river is… Dryadal. Home of the elves.” Then he panned back south. “And last, but certainly not least, in the southeast, we have Besti. Home of the beastborn.”

“Awww,” Sam sighed. “That’s probably going to be the last one we visit.”

Jake closed the map and shrugged. “Sorry, Sam. But the quest has to come before sight-seeing.”

“I know, I know. I just wanted to see my people!”

Jake chuckled. “Sam, you do know that you spent most of your life as a human and that you have way more in common with us than them, right?”

“I know that, but I’m also curious about the culture of the race that I’ve become. Is it survival of the fittest? Is the strongest the one who becomes the leader?” Sam gasped. “As an adventurer, I’m way stronger than most people. Could I become the ruler of Besti?”

“I believe that both Besti and Pumil are monarchies in similar nature to Vir,” Tim replied. “At least, that is what I have heard.”

Sam deflated. “Aww, that’s no fun.”

I frowned as I had a sudden thought. “We aren’t going to run into any political problems since we’re coming from Vir, right? Do the humans and dwarves get along?”

“Huh, I don’t think we should run into any problems?” Jake half-said, half-asked. “The vibe I’ve been getting from people is that they get along fine with the dwarves, but then again, we are pretty far away from the border.”

The conversation died down for a bit after that until we hit a bump. The can of adventurer-sardines was shaken a bit from that. David Junior the Second ended up on the floor, while Megan nearly ended up on my lap.

“Sorry about that,” was all she said as we resettled.

“Don’t worry about it,” I replied. “I uhh... Don’t mind.”

Jake sighed. “So, I guess that confirms it. You two are dating again, aren’t you?”

Megan looked him dead in the eye, entwined her hand with mine, and said. “Yup. Got a problem with it?”

Meanwhile, I wasn’t handling it nearly as well, and my face turned red with embarrassment. I didn’t let go of her hand, though.

After a bit, Jake sighed again. “No, I guess not. Not as long as it doesn’t impact the party. And I guess you two dating is better than both of you moping around and avoiding each other.”

Our conversation turned to other matters after that. I finally asked about money and found out that it was mostly just split evenly among everyone for now. I also found out that, in total, we had more than 2000 gold coins to our name.

“Why did we make such a big deal about the 450 gold for fare then?” I asked.

Emilia hmmphhed from next to Jake. “It was the principle of the matter. I knew he was gouging the price because he had a monopoly, and I wasn’t going to take it.”

“And it was a good call Em,” Jake said, and he gave her hand a squeeze. “You saved us 250 gold, put him in his place, and even led us to the reason why prices are so high for everything.”

Emilia paused and had a faraway look in her eyes, so Jake nudged her. “Em, you okay?”

She shook her head. “Yeah, yeah. I was just thinking.” She paused for a few more seconds to collect her thoughts. “If prices are like that for all adventurers, doesn’t that mean that gear is going to be incredibly expensive? What about potions and other emergency supplies? Also, food. I mean, food wasn’t expensive enough to be noticeable, but along with everything else...” She trailed off.

Jake frowned. “Yeah, you’re right. It’ll be difficult to afford new gear for any adventurer then.” He cocked his head. “Did you have something in mind for that?”

“Well, I don’t have the logistics figured out yet, but what about a trading company for adventurers? We could have non-adventurers make the purchases from non-adventurers, and then we could have adventurers make the sales to other adventurers to drive the prices down to reasonable ones.”

“That sounds like a great idea!” Jake replied. “After all this is over, that could be your business model. You’re a real [Merchant] now.”

Emilia laughed. “I suppose I am.” Then she froze and shook her head. “Actually, I just got the subclass, so I guess now I am.”

We congratulated her and asked what skills it gave. It turned out it basically just gave her the ability to sell things. We figured out that anyone can trade, but to actually sell items at the System generated price, you need to be a [Merchant].

Everyone tried purchasing arrows from her just for kicks, and just like she assumed, the price was a lot lower than what it was in town.

When it was finally my turn, we confirmed that you did need an inventory to trade, as Emilia and I both got hit with an error message from the System. However, that was about what we expected, so it didn’t bother me much.

All things told, the ride was a peaceful time. There were still monster attacks every once in a while because I didn’t stop being a [Monster Magnet], and we had to go back to having me wait away from everyone whenever we stopped for the night, but in many ways, it almost felt like a vacation.

However, that could have just been my perspective since I actually had a real girlfriend.

Speaking of my girlfriend, Megan really started warming up to the party during that trip. Maybe it was because of me, or it could be she simply was making longer-term plans than stealing from everyone and bailing. Either way, she no longer snuck around everywhere when we were stopped, she started talking with the party even when I wasn’t there, and she even cracked jokes with a deadpan delivery that took some getting used to.

I wasn’t the only one who noticed. In fact, during one of her times on “Titus watch,” Sam even grudgingly admitted that Megan was making a lot of progress. She still thought I could do better than Megan, at which I jokingly threatened to snap away David Junior since Sam “talked smack about my girlfriend.”

I didn’t hear any more complaints from her after that.

However, our vacation couldn’t last forever. This time it was interrupted by a System notification.

System: Zone entered, Unnamed. Faction - Neutral

I was worried as soon as we saw that. “Guys, we’re back in a zone,” I immediately called out. I moved forward in the carriage and asked our driver, “Do you know how far we have to travel until we’re out of this zone?”

“It’s been a while since we’ve gone this route, and this didn’t use to be a zone,” he replied. “However, there’s a small town about 2 or 3 days up ahead, so it has to be less than that.”

I relayed that to the party and asked for their thoughts.

“We don’t know what kind of spawn rate we’re dealing with here,” Jake said. “If it’s Faroff forest spawn rates, then we should be fine. We’ll have to be careful, but I think we can keep everyone safe.” He paused. “If it’s Starry Forest spawn rates…” he trailed off.

We all let that sink in.

I was worried. If things ended up like Starry Forest, I would end up running for my life again. We couldn’t handle all of that while also keeping others alive. To make matters worse, it was only a few hours from dark, which meant the spawn rates would worsen.

I was worried and close to panic. My hands were clenched, and I grit my teeth, preparing for the horrors that would surely await us.

Then I had a thought and realized I was a complete, 100% idiot.

I laughed out loud, and the party looked at me like I had lost my mind. I ignored them and went back up to the driver. “Hey, turn us around. We should spend the night outside the unnamed zone and then get going first thing in the morning.”

I explained the rest of the plan to the party. I would go out into the zone at night and check out the spawn rate while I still had the option of retreating, and then we would decide what to do from there. If it was too high, I would leg it first thing in the morning while the spawn rate was low and try to get through the zone in a single day.

The party settled in for the night, and I went to check out the forest alone.

I couldn’t help but chuckle. “Could you imagine if we had just kept going like a bunch of idiots?”