[Blake POV]

Just as the maelstrom of memories was threatening to rob me of my consciousness, I ended it an instant. That intense feeling I had just experienced felt like a lie now, It left me wondering if I just imagined it. I look in my left hand, and I see the empty page I was holding has been filled out with new info. I gazed upon the smouldering lines on the page and can finally see my status:

Blake Fels

Gender: Female Job: Dark Knight Level: 3

Race: Human(Highlander) Title: -none- Age: 20

Blessings and Curses: ****** Status: Healthy

Passive Skills:

Durable

Great Weapon Master

Heavy Armor Master

Human Determination

Active Skills: -Locked-

I looked at the page with awe, a completely new status page that we had never seen before. Not only did we not get this information from the job changing rooms in our town or Guildhall, but this is completely different from the status page of the game. There was no class written on the status page, but the other info we had to write down was on here. I wonder why Leon had us write the info before though, is it some sort of test? Before I had a chance to properly calm down, Rhyse shoved me aside so he could do his as well. His experience seems to be close to mine, since his body appears to be convulsing strongly. It took him a little bit longer than me it seems, and he is definitely worn out again. Though, when he looked at his status, a small smile of joy floated on his face. Anne was next after that, but her reaction was nowhere near as large as ours were. Though she seemed to like the info written on her stats page.

We gave the pages to a very enthusiastic Leon, who quietly organized and binded the new sheets with the old ones we signed. He took a look at the sheets of our status, he raised a quiet eyebrow and a mild look of interest before tucking them away in a separate file cabinet.

“With that completed, you three are now registered members of the guild. Please wait a moment while your cards are being generated.” Leon droned.

He puts out a new magic machine on the desk, sighs a frustrated sigh as he needs to pull the sheets out of the cabinet again. I took a look at the apparatus while Leon was busy digging for our info again. It looks like a photocopier, but with way more ornate metal and crystals. While I was gawking at the strange machine, he finds our info and has the machine scan the pages. Within a minute we hear the magic machine generating 3 wooden cards with our names on it and the relevant guild info. I grabbed mine, it just says what I wrote on the first page but if I put just a little mana in it, the plaque magically changes to show my status page instead. Rhyse, Anne and I were both amazed by this technology, which most certainly did not exist during the game nor in our town right now.

“Excuse me leon, why did you have us write the same info that was going to be shown with the status page?” I asked, which surprised him since he wasn’t expecting me to talk.

“Well, some people don’t want their true names and age to be shown easily on their guild card, this gives them an opportunity to hide their true names. Well as long as you are able to control mana.” He answered.

“Another question then, how come you didn’t make us take a test to prove what classes we were?” I asked, unable to ignore the desire to know why.

“That is because the status page will show which job you have, which clues us into which classes to designate you as. Plus it is a useful trick to know which adventurers will be trustworthy or not, because how can the guild trust you to complete a job if you are not honest with your abilities from the beginning.” He said with conviction, now done with my questions.

We walked out of the door next to the front desk, with Spike waiting for us next to the door. Since we have the proper identification, we finally rented a private room with guild official appraisers. They were able to convert our silver and gold coins into the local currency. We technically “sold” them since they are artifacts due to the purity of the coins' metal. We got around 500 small gold coins, 100 large gold coins, and 1000 silver coins. This is a large amount of money, enough to live a life of luxury for 5 years. We gave Spike 10% of each coin total since we are also buying their silence, which he seems to appreciate. We decided to head out of the guild building and head to the plaza.

Anne was almost skipping with joy leaving the slums behind us, a sentiment that I also agree with. I had a feeling that we were close to overstaying our welcome in that part of town. We reached the plaza where our full group was waiting including the party of Spike. The group seemed satisfied with the amount of money we got, especially Spike’s group. My team wanted to find a decent inn, so we had Spike tell us a good name and pointed the right direction. They decided to split off from us to finish their own errands and we decided that it was a good time to split from them as well. I think we probably reach the limit of friendly terms with them, it is never a good idea to rely on someone so much. Especially when they only thing stringing them along is a fat purse of coins.

We walked in the opposite direction of the slums to find a nice mercantile area close to the port. We found the inn suggested, The Shoalspire Tavern, and headed inside. It was a beautiful 5-story stone and wooden building. It looked well built and maintained, unlike the buildings in the slums. Opposite from the dingy and broken floors of the adventurer’s guild, this has immaculate treated floors that practically shine with cleanliness. The clientele seems to mostly merchants with a few other heavily equipped adventurer parties. The innkeeper was stationed behind the bar, a stout dwarven woman posted there. She had a fierce face and a rather well built body, you can tell by the intensity that she is no ordinary dwarf. She noticed us, and waved me inside towards the bar she was manning. This might be interesting…

“Hey Lassie! Ya lookin to dine here, or ya lookin to for a place to sleep?” She said in a heavy irish-gaelic accent.

“Hello! Yes, my party and I were looking for a couple of rooms to rent for the night. How many do you have available?” I asked, in a polite manner.

“Hah Good! We have a good amount of room, but how many were you planning on housing here tonight?” She asked back in a good mood.

“My party has 16 members plus a pack animal, do you have rooms available for us?” I asked back with a hopefully tinge in my voice.

“My word what a large party! Well, we do have large barracks like rooms to rent, though we use those rooms for large merchant groups or knight orders.” She said, with a merchant smile on her face.

“Well that will work for us, how much for one of those rooms?” I said back slightly nervous.

“It would be 5 small gold coins a night for the lot of ya, can you afford that lassie?” She said with a little concern, perhaps she is actually quite caring.

“That seems fair, we would like to stay 4 days then, also are meals included or extra with that.” I asked.

“Aye, they would be included, though not the ale you order. The total amount paid is 20 small gold coins. Can you pay it now, or does it need to be day to day?” She asked.

“We can pay it now,” I pulled out a purse with the small gold coins and pulled out 20 shiny new coins.

“How wonderful! My name Nesma and my husband’s name is Galmyl, call us if you need anything dearie.” She said with an almost motherly tone.

We got the keys to our new room, and began unloading the saddle bags off of the Rothe. We slowly began to fill our room with our equipment, though that seemed to bring some attention to the people inside of the building. They didn’t seem like the unsavory type, but we better leave people behind to guard our stuff when we head out. I rather not have our equipment stolen by some thief, especially some of our good magical gear. From the conversation from Spike, magical items tend to be rare and valuable in the area of the world. Hopefully we didn’t make too big of a splash in the slums, but I have a feeling that we might have drawn some rather unwanted attention.

Oh we also learned why the guild charges people without I.D. a lot of money for the private rooms. There is a large history of mafias and gangs who would use those as secret meeting rooms for their organizations because the guild is magically contracted to never record or listen to conversation inside of one unless requested. It apparently went on for years before a new guildmaster from the local order of knights tried to clean it up. With the I.D. check now in place, they can see who is using a lot of private meeting time, and if they pay the fee then get to use the money as profits for the guild. So most mafia have their low ranking members become adventurers, and then they pay the fee anytime they want to have a conversation with the big boys. The guild doesn’t really mind since they get a large amount of money from them.

This realization is why I am getting a bad feeling ever since we left that place, too many people noticed our purses getting fatter leaving the guild. Though our group is heavily armored with rather strong bodies, though we lack skill I am sure that they wouldn’t want to fight a party that looks as tough as we do. Especially since it has come out that I am level 3, which is a big deal apparently. We just have to be careful, and be ready to strike if they decide to test us. Though I am sure the wonder twins of edgy, Tyler and Jack, would like for someone to attack us.

The night has finally settled on a rather eventful day. I took off my armor for the first time today, leaving me in my sweat soaked underclothes right now. I would love to take a nice cold shower right now, but all they have is roman-style baths for the inn's private use. And it is not separated by gender, so we all get into one large pool of warmed water that is magically cleaned every hour. The only comfort I have is that each floor of the 5 floor building has a separate block of time they get to use the bath, with the really late hours being free to everyone. Since we are the only people who are renting on the 2nd floor, we get a block of time with just ourselves. Overall, I believe we can make this situation work even if it is slightly inconvenient. At least we get baths, I know that michael’s group is probably still roughing it in the woods.

I quickly changed out of my soaked underclothes into good normal wear, I feel a little gross but that cleanliness can wait. I want to have a proper meal with some dwarven ale, one of the ultimate DnD players' fantasies. I found a nice table where that was all alone in the corner, a hostess walked up to grab my order before giving the details to the kitchen. She comes back with a tall tankard full of wonderful smelling ale, the head of the beverage is peaking above the rim dangerously. I picked it up and began downing it, a sweet almost fruity ale with notes of bitter hops poured down my gullet, I knew I was dangerously hooked now…

I spent the night in a long rager of booze, the sheer volume of alcohol I consumed even impressed the dwarven owners of the tavern. Though, I spent the whole night alone, most of my got cleaned and went to bed early. I stumbled my wave back to the room where sounds of my team snoring greeted me, I threw off my clothes as clumsily as possible, launching myself into a nice warm bed after 4 nights of camping outdoors. This is the first night in a while we didn’t have a nightwatch, I am going to enjoy sleeping in. Tomorrow is going to be a day full of shopping and exploring the port, hopefully we can get our hands on a nice map…

I awoke to a head-splitting hangover, the type that makes you regret every action you have ever made the day previously. I only managed 6 hours of sleep before the after effects of the hangover overtook me. I had to dry heave in the latrine for a while, before finally just heading to the bath. Luckily the bath has another hour of free time before the first floor gets its block of time. The pleasant water and the nice feeling of dirty washing away from my body helped ease my headache a bit. I also grabbed a pitcher of water from one of the dwarven employees, the look of sympathy they gave me as I gulped the liquid down was painful to bear. There are a couple of other people in here with me, but it is not like anyone gives a shit. The people here generally have no real concept of shame when it comes to nakedness, or perhaps that people are busy trying to get clean and don’t give a shit what others are doing. It is probably the second one.

I got out feeling refreshed despite my head still screaming, I quickly found the nightwear I walked in with and made it back to the room. When I came back, people looked at me funny when I said I went to the bath. Not like I give a shit, this isn’t my body anyway and I was really too hungover to care anymore. Though Anne and other women seemed a bit worried when I said that...In case you guys are wondering, I did think about the appearance change elixir. But the problem is if it expels the excess mass from a body much bigger than the original, what happens if I want to change to my original body that is much bigger than this one? I didn’t think about it until Alex said something, which caused me to lose my nerve to try for a while. I can still hear the awful sounds that came from Anne, I really don’t want to think about what would happen to me…

I slowly put on my armor with Anne’s help, and went to the dining area for some breakfast. Most of my team joined me, the earlier riser at least, and we had a cheerful party at breakfast. All of the girls and 4 of the guys including Rhyse were there with me to enjoy a proper portside breakfast. The fresh “organic” eggs and bacon with proper smoking and spices were miles ahead of the usual shit we get at the university dining halls. A loaf of brioche-like bread, croissants, a beautiful smoked fish that tastes like salmon, an assortment of jams, 3 types of aged cheeses, and a lobster-like creature that is local to the area. The food here is amazing, All of us ate more than we ever should have. They even had strong tea and coffee, we are in the lap of luxury and it basically costs us nothing. The amount of coins we were trading in was motes of dust in the Sahara that is our treasury, this city is far more wonderful than I had ever hoped.

The rest of the slowpokes from our team came in, but they missed out on the fresh breakfast and had to accept quiches instead of the spread we enjoyed. Not that they minded, considering the looks of bliss on their faces when they dug into it. We assigned 2 to stay behind while the rest explore the city, they were assigned to guard our stuff and feed our Rothe. I immediately decided to go to the port to see the ships along with Rhyse, Anne and the girls went back to the markets here to go buy some of the stuff they looked at yesterday with the wolf-beastmen girls. Their mission is to find any book or magic stores in the city, as well as scope out the technology level here. Also they seem to be having fun, which is better than worrying about how we go home. A lot of the people with me are younger, and have not spent a lot of time away from their parents. The stress must be eating them alive.

I headed out of our beautiful inn, and went towards the deep-blue sea in the front of the building. Rhyse tagged along in his heavy robes, making sure that nobody can see his elven body. Since the Inn was built on top of a hill, we walked along a slowly declining road with buildings built closely together. It feels like walking in an old English or Dutch city, where you can feel the history in these sturdy well-built walls of buildings. There are cafes with outside seating, we can see what looks like merchants enjoying the rising sun with a newspaper and a hot coffee. I couldn’t get a close look at the paper without making a scene, but it looks similar to the paper from back home. Maybe not as high quality and mass-produced, but it definitely seems to be close to industrial age paper. Maybe this world is more advanced than we thought?

We walked past the numerous shops, hearing the sound of blacksmiths banging away at their crafts, the aroma of fresh baked bread coming from bakeries, the distinct smell of leather makers and their chemicals, and the herbal scent of a potion maker swirled around us. We were tempted to rush into the buildings, especially the bakery, but we still had our mission to take care of. We walked along for a while, before finally seeing a truly massive harbor and port. The sheer amount of shipping lanes available is outstanding, with countless numbers of sails dotting along the horizon. The harble has a little inlet where the river dumps into, it is like it was once a lake next to the ocean before one wall broke apart to connect to the sea. 2 Lighthouses are built on either side of the inlet, and just beyond the “lake’s” shallow waters is a sheer drop off of deep blue sea. This is just some port city, this is a major shipping lane and trade hub.

We walk all to the port, right where the guards closed off the area to civilians without a pass or a ship. People stood just the right of the gate and advertised passages to other cities. Others would recruit for work and others were busy loading the cargo into the massive warehouses that are beyond the gates. Though I wanted to get a better look at the boats, I can get a close view since the guards and the gates are blocking me. Oh well, I guess we will look around the shops around the gate, I am sure they shouldn’t disappoint too badly.

We walked alongside the wall separating the town and the pier, and we came across an interesting shop. It didn’t have the normal alphabet for the language of Rompounge, but instead the latin alphabet. It was a horribly generic name, “Magic Shoppe,” but it had english words in a world that should have never even seen the latin alphabet. Rhyse and I debated for a while if it was some sort of trap or a magical sign that auto-translates into the language of the reader. After deciding either option is probably ridiculous, we went inside to see a room covered in grimoires.

The Grimoires covered every inch of the walls, each of them had some sort of unique cover. Some were glowing with dazzling lights, others were emanating a strange fog, and some had to be chained down due to the because they were violently thrashing around. In the back, we see a blond-haired middle-aged human nose deep inside some sort of text. He hasn’t even noticed us walking towards him, that is how deep his concentration is. Though if you had to man a store with the constant sounds of a book violently rattling chains, perhaps I would learn how to tune out everything.

“Hello Sir, is this store open?” I said to him, taking off my magic earring to speak to him in English.

He jumped out of skin, completely started to see me and Rhyse right in front of him. He gaped his mouth like a fish, and the book he was holding was tossed away in his fright. After taking a better look at his face, I see countless scars marring what once was a handsome face. He was missing a part of his left earlobe, his right hand only had 3 full fingers, and his left leg looked like it had been through a wood chipper. He finally seemed to have registered my words in his head, light returning to his started eyes.

“Wow! I hadn’t expected to hear English after all of this time! Welcome Welcome! Is this your first day here?” He said while standing back up, favoring his left leg with plenty of support.

“So I assume you are someone from America? Or at least somewhere from earth?” I asked back.

“HAHA! Yes! Sorry for my excitement, it has been a while since I have spoken to someone like me. Yes, I am originally from America. Though, I have been here for a while. I have honestly forgotten how long it has been since the day I arrived.” He said with a bitter smile, I returned the smile since he has not found a way home after all this time.

“Well since you answered our question, We came here around 2 and a Half weeks ago. We are desperately trying to find a way to get back home.” Rhyse said, also thinking about the fact this guy has spent so long with a way back.

“Looks like we have much to discuss, I will close the shop and lead you to a table in the back. I hope you guys have time for a really long story!” He said, as he began prep for closing.

He quickly flipped the sign outside to indicate the store was closed, locked the door, and placed a magic spell with a wand he pulled out onto the door. I can hear what sounds like earth hardening together as he placed the spell, perhaps he strengthened the lock?

“Now now now, Before we begin I should say that my name is Xander, what about yours?” He said as we sat around an old dusty round table.

“I am Blake,” “And I am Rhyse,” Rhyse and I said. Reciprocating the gesture from Xander.

“I am sure you have many questions, but let me finish my story first. I will probably answer your most pressing ones.” He said with a slight twinge of sadness.

His story was a story that started similar to ours, He was a young man who had just landed his first major job. It was for a tech company that regularly worked their employees 90 to 100 hours a week. There have been many rounds of layoffs despite the companies record profits each year, and they forced their workforce to be competitive with each other. This was a nightmare company to work for, but this was the only one to give him a chance after he failed spectacularly out of college. He was an unfortunate soul who needed his job more than the job needed him, which made him overtime everyday just to seem useful to his inhumane bosses. He eventually worked himself to death, the constant stress and lack of sleep gave him a stroke that essentially paralyzed him completely. Since this was in Texas, the company was able to find every loophole to avoid paying his medical fees and disability. He was left a friendless cripple who was drowning in debt with no one to assist him.

He was released by the hospital and put inside of his apartment. A shithole apartment that has no accommodations to help a quadrapelgic like him, and now he had massive debts and no job to pay it off. The apartment soon evicted him, leaving him out on the street in a wheelchair. Unable to even move into cover when it rained due to his injury, he died shortly afterwards. But when he expected a warm nothingness of eternal sleep, he found himself in a field in a strange world. He had on his worn out destroyed shirt pants when he was dying in the street, but now he can move again. His muscles that were once atrophied into nothingness, now was back to his original strength. He looked around to see a wondrous world free of the concrete hell he had once lived in, and set out to live this life without the regrets and pain he lived with the last one.

He walked along until he found a small town, though he was unfortunate to find that he was unable to speak with the people of this world. But he found a way by pantimining and gesturing what he needs to the villagers. They villagers kindly took him in, on the promise that he would help with their fields. He slowly learned how to speak their language, and the villagers were shocked to learn that he knew some much math. He learned the symbols for math quickly, since they were similar to arabic ones, and was able to help with all sorts of accounting in the village. But eventually, he wanted to leave the village to go on a proper adventure. So he saved enough money to survive in the nearest city for a while, and set out to become an adventurer.

Xander found his way into one of the largest cities of the Mandenian Empire, Chawborough. It is a river city, founded at the convergence point of many rivers and tributaries. This makes it one of the vital trade centers for the empire, and also makes it one of the best places to become an adventurer. He went in and became an adventurer, becoming and underappreciated by necessary [Rogue] for the party he formed with other newbies. They called themselves the Fortuna, because Xander wanted to name the party after a goddess of luck. And when they first started out, they were indeed lucky.

They found an ancient ruin completely untouched by others in the first 3 months of their parties existence, it was an ancient magic library filled to the brim with magic items. The 7 of them became wealthier than they could ever imagine, they couldn’t even sell all of the books due to the sheer amount of them. One of the party members, a [Spatial Mage], was able to store an unbelievable amount of them in his pocket dimension. And they were able to hide their treasure from wannabe vultures and from the thieves hoping to get an easy score. All of them wanted to continue traveling and adventuring, so they bought expensive equipment from the cash they had bought. But the thing is, nothing is more dangerous to newbies than early success.

A year later they found themselves on the brink of Level 8, though no score had been as good as the first, they had continued to amass their fortunes and incredible equipment. They had more magic items than they could possibly attune with, they had immense fame because of their exploits, and their wealth was unbelievable. They were heroes to the city Chawborough and they lived their lives like them. But eventually, their fame began to subside. And their missions became less and less profitable, and their injuries kept getting more and more serious with increasingly difficult opponents. Then they made the worst decision in their careers.

In the Mandenian Empire, there is one massive cavern that has thousands of tunnels leading to more massive caverns. It is the Underworld as they call it, and it seems the Underdark in DnD is similar in design. No one has even gotten close to mapping out the entirety of the cave system, not even 1%. It is said that it is almost a whole world beneath the surface, that there are even oceans deep in the earth. No one can say for sure, but we do know that denizens of the Underworld are far more deadly and vicious than anything on the surface. It is here that Xander and his party Fortuna met their end. Deep in the unknowing caverns, they underestimated just how deadly fauna and the flora is. Even the earth is your enemy, and that is what happened to them. They walked across on stone that was brittle, and fell down an unknown shaft with no idea how to get back to the surface.