Three weeks had passed since Harold returned from his week in the forest.

They were still stuck on the same issues, mostly funding for the expedition and finalizing their members. Livia had kept busy, hosting a number of parties with the help of Liam and Ella’s personal stores of booze and making use of that and the [System] to upgrade another one of her Skills, [Play the Host]. The Skill was a Passive, subtly improving her ability to be the charming host in her own abodes, it worked almost like a glamor, although the effect was rather weak. No longer.

[Skill upgrade: Play the Host -> Socialite’s Allure]

When it finally worked she had almost wanted to celebrate, again. But the overall sentiment, that that was enough partying for now, won over in the end.

The new version was only slightly more powerful, it worked everywhere however. And it also added a certain sense of mystique and progressiveness about her, on top of the attentive and welcoming air the Passive had provided already.

Livia got the sense that the [System] was being very generous with her when counting her raucous tavern parties as 'socialite events' but if you looked around for somebody to complain about it to then she was not it. In the end she was left feeling very grateful. Although Mr. Beard made that mood hard to maintain.

[I swear Livia. If only you understood half the intricacy of the loopholes I made use of to pull this off for you, you would be groveling. GROVELING.]

"Ow, how did you do that?"

[Do you like it?] The voice was still the robotic voice of the [System] but with Mr Beard's cadence, and now he had apparently learned to yell.

"No, obviously not, don't do it again, your peeping is bad enough."

[Hmf, come now, it could come in useful, I will use it to warn of imminent emergency situations.] The voice simply ignored her implications, he had made it clear over and over how little anything sexual interested him with no access to any bodily functions or even sensation-based physical emotion. It was apparently a weird state to be in, but he had been trained to deal with it.

"You won't, it's a distraction and you have terrible timing." The voice harrumphed again at that but did let her be. There was another day on the town at hand.

Kalle had attempted their third [Rare Quest] and failed to upgrade his [Ritualistic Practice], although he made a lot of progress with it considering the miniscule headway he had managed before it on his own and with nothing but old folks tales to go off of in terms of what rituals there were to learn from. Salcret people were not a superstitious lot, if they did not get it via the [System] then they were easily convinced it was not of much use. Some things survived, like greeting the spring with a loud shout from the base of your belly, and doing things for the kids at certain times of the year, but not much that was meant to have a magic effect.

The [Quest] actually had him studying a villager for a few days, who suffered from tics that had them ritualistically performing repeated actions in specific ways until they got them just right. He did not see the point of the task at all on that first day, but on the second he realized they were tapping into something, some intuition that guided their hands. The results when they got things right were always so satisfying, even to Kalle, and they clearly felt that themselves too.

In the end the bonus objective must have meant applying the realization to his Skills somehow, but he did not figure it out in time and the upgrade was a failure. But things were not all doom and gloom.

Winter was still hanging on, but only just. Another few weeks would bring the first days of spring, and so they needed to use every [Quest] cooldown to recruit now that the three core members had each gotten a shot at it. Once on the road they would be prioritizing whatever seemed more useful at that time, so this might have been Kalle’s last shot for a while, but he did not let it get to him. There were plenty of other avenues for improvement after all.

When Livia came into town it seemed like something was up. She was up and awake later than the others as usual, and only Oscar was around at the guild house to explain.

“Karl and the rest decided on organizing an auction, Redd is apparently selling his old place and so there was sort of a cascading effect, now a bunch of deals are looking to find homes and it’s going down tonight!” Livia imagined her eyes were filled with dollar signs. “We’re going, gather the lads and the loots!”

That night the whole town was gathered, even if you did not have anything particular to buy it was still exciting seeing who would end up with what and if any particularly good or bad deals would take place.

Sten had not been coming by as much, mostly for specific training sessions, since he had been having some trouble at home and needed to minimise his connection to their [Guild]. He was there tonight though, and so were the three siblings that had all given a tentative yes to the invitation to travel together to Dormata, although the details of whether they would join up with the [Guild] or not remained to be hammered out.

Albert from the brewery was there with his old master, looking to pick up all the prime apples while Agnes went through people’s herbal gardens and their produce which was grown year round by some people who had special Skills to shield theirs from winter. Every [Farmer], every [Builder] and [Rancher] and even the whole lumber mill had turned out. Tonight was when a large portion of their goods from the past season was doled out to the highest bidder, a large section of the audience would be finding out their income for the coming months.

Only a few had the ability and opportunity to bring a caravan of carts to Dormata, and those that did paid well for the privilege and earned all the more if they made it safely with the cargo intact.

Livia and the gang had gathered over one thousand two hundred silver for their trip, and even if some of it needed to last them on arrival the highest priority was getting there in the first place.

They had food and some gear, but they needed all kinds of things still. A cart or two, horses or possibly a pony or donkey of some kind if there were not enough, and maybe even some new weaponry since Livia had sold off her hammer on arrival and did not want to feel defenseless for two weeks of camping.

They went for it. They went for it hard, calling out bids and even haggling with favors behind the scenes when the cause seemed lost, but it was to no avail. They ended up with nothing essentially, even the few things that there was plenty of seemed overpriced, or maybe it was festival prices?

There was a mood throughout Salcret, of having survived another winter with another summer to look forward to, even if they were taking the victory for granted in advance a little. Livia had done her bit to keep moral up with all the partying in the weeks before, but mostly everyone was just having a good day.

Except for the [Guild] it seemed, and possibly the two fellows from the brewery, although that one seemed odd since they had made it out with plenty of the better batches, even if Lena stole one or two for her inn and tavern. The older master seemed to be giving Albert a haranguing for some reason, and the minor celebrity had been avoiding looking at their group all night.

They were all too disappointed in their own evening to be truly curious anyway, they would all need to look for ways to make up for this somehow.

Almost the worst part was seeing Redd and the Captain, who was apparently his daughter, happily buying horse after horse and the best cart and even some very nice lumber and all kinds of things, raising the bar for everyone else with a wallet that seemed inexhaustible. Apparently selling a farm that you had been working on for 40 years with all kinds of Skills paid well.

Bastards. Give me some! Of course things can’t just be that easy. Sigh.

She felt like shouting out some complaints, and by the looks on some of the other faces among the bidders she was not the only one. The giant razor sharp spear, or ax or whatever it was, kept her tongue tightly under control though. He seemed like a friendly sort, but even the kindest of men could hide a temper, and Redd looked like he could get scary real fast. Kalle sighed behind her and they all shared sympathetic nods and gave it up.

Livia started heading back at the head of her group, new plans slowly churning. Seemed like she was going to need an [Accountant].